While perusing the /r/jailbreak boards this weekend, I was reminded about a website that once existed for the specific purpose of passing APT repositories through a URL using the ‘?source=’ parameter, which would then present the end user with buttons to add that particular repository to all available package manager apps that the user might have installed on their jailbroken device.
While that exact website no longer exists, /u/uchks shared an Internet Archive link showing us what it looked like back in the day for reference, and then shared a project of their own dubbed jbredir that does effectively the same exact thing for at least four popular package manager apps still in use today, including Cydia, Installer, Sileo, and Zebra.
The developer acknowledges that some might consider the website useless considering that you can easily add repositories in the package manager apps themselves manually, but it’s worth noting that if you use multiple package manager apps, then using a website like this makes adding the same repository to all your package manager apps as easy as tapping on a button for each one instead of taking more steps.
One of the obvious pain points is that jbredir only supports Cydia, Installer, Sileo, and Zebra. While the latter two are commonly used today, Cydia is no longer officially supported on jailbreaks for iOS & iPadOS 15 and later, and Installer isn’t very widely used anymore either.
Missing from the list of supported package manager apps are PurePKG and Saily, with the latter being common for XinaA15 and Xinam1ne jailbreak users, and PurePKG being a newer offering that’s essentially a redesigned wrapper for the Sileo package manager with a new look and feel. The developer doesn’t plan to add support for any additional package manager apps, so what you see is what you get.
As you can see below, once you enter a repository’s URL into the website, you’ll get four buttons that make adding the designated repository to any of your installed package managers as easy as tapping on a single button. This means you won’t have to manually type out the URL or copy and paste it into each app more than once:
If you’re interested in trying jbredir, you can head over to the project’s working website right now and take it for a spin of your own.
In the /r/jailbreak post, the developer concedes the website’s “arguably pointless nature,” but we think it’ll be a time saver for at least those out there who use more than one package manager app on their jailbroken device and want to keep their repositories in sync between all of them by adding all sources to each package manager app at the same time.
What are your thoughts about jbredir? Let us know in the comments section down below.