Custom Anisette Server

Note

Public anisette servers are now safe on SideStore 0.4.0

SideStore 0.4.0 introduced anisette-v3 servers, which are creating custom anisette data for each device, and thus are not subject to locking as the older servers were.

Thus, you can safely use SideStore without worrying about setting up a custom anisette server.

Anisette data is information used in the app signing process that needs to be generated each time you install or refresh apps. SideStore gets this information from a server that spoofs a Mac and sends you back the anisette data. No account info is sent to the server ever in this process.

When many people use the same Anisette server, it trips Apple’s security, and locks the accounts that were using that machine. This is why we recommend using a separate burner Apple ID instead of your main one.

Our team worked on better approaches to avoid locked accounts (in the form of anisette-v3). But if for some reason, you are using some older version of SideStore, hosting your own anisette server is a great way to avoid locked accounts. This is made incredibly easy thanks to our current server being open source and made for docker environments. This means we can deploy a server with nothing more than the GitHub link.

Deploy on Render

Render is a service for easily creating servers. It supports loading server sources from GitHub. The free tier is quite limited in terms of resources, but the server can run comfortably on it without issue.

Due to too many people using the same GitHub URL, you will have to fork the Git repository yourself.

1. Register for a GitHub account, if you do not already have one.
2. Open the Git repository.
3. Click “Fork” in the top right, and fork the repository to your account.
4. Once the forked repository is created, click the green “Code” dropdown in the top right, and copy the .git URL.

• Save this for later.

Once this is done, the Render server can be made.

1. Register for an account.
2. Create a New Web Service.
3. Scroll down to Public Git repository and enter the URL you copied earlier.
4. Click “Continue” and fill in the form:
   • Name - Does not matter
   • Region - Closest to you
   • Branch - main (default)
   • Root Directory - blank (default)
   • Environment - Docker (default)
   • Instance Type - Free

5. Wait for the server to build. You will see the following when it’s done:

Machine requires provisioning... done !
Your service is live 🎉

If the build fails for any reason, click Manual Deploy, then Deploy latest commit.

6. Find the link for your new server at the top of the page:

https://[your-server-name].onrender.com

Use your server with SideStore

SideStore can be configured to use a custom Anisette server. We will use the one that we just created.

1. Open Settings.
2. Scroll down and tap on SideStore.
3. Within the Danger Zone:
   • Use preferred servers - Toggle off
   • Anisette URL - Enter your server URL

Done

SideStore will now use your new custom anisette server, and your account should not get locked.