iOS 12

Prevent thieves from powering down your iPhone with LockShut

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated November 29, 2021

One of the first things a clever iPhone thief will do upon stealing your expensive handset is turn it off so that you can’t call it to listen for your ringtone or use its built-in GPS receiver to track it via Find My iPhone. With this sentiment in mind, it’s amazing that Apple doesn’t require additional secure steps to fully power off your device.

iOS developer Greg Rabago (Greg0109) recognized this eyebrow-raising caveat and consequently developed a new jailbreak tweak called LockShut in an effort to prevent thieves from powering down your iPhone without your permission.

How to remove the unc0ver jailbreak without restoring your iPhone or iPad

Anthony Bouchard ∙ July 27, 2020

If your handset is jailbroken with unc0ver and you’ve either decided that you revert to a vanilla version of iOS or that you want to start over with a different jailbreak tool, it’s important to know that the unc0ver jailbreak incorporates a mechanism for rolling your handset back to a pre-jailbroken state.

In this step-by-step tutorial, we’ll walk you through the steps necessary to remove the unc0ver jailbreak and all of its components from your iPhone or iPad. This process is recommended over totally restoring your handset because it will preserve your valuable personal data and ensure that your device can still be jailbroken in the future if you happen to change your mind.

How to remove the checkra1n jailbreak without restoring your iPhone or iPad

Anthony Bouchard ∙ July 26, 2020

Whether you’ve jailbroken with the checkra1n tool and fancy reverting back to a vanilla version of iOS or you merely want to uninstall checkra1n to try a different jailbreak tool, the checkra1n jailbreak includes a convenient built-in utility for removing the jailbreak with just a few simple taps.

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to remove the checkra1n jailbreak without completely restoring your iPhone or iPad. This method is traditionally recommended over a full-blown device restore because it doesn’t erase your data and it preserves your version of iOS. The latter is especially useful if you’re removing checkra1n to try another jailbreak since other jailbreaks can be picky about the versions of iOS they support.

Unc0ver v5.3.1 update auto-removes leftover files from RootlessJB

Anthony Bouchard ∙ July 23, 2020

The unc0ver team released unc0ver v5.3.0 just a few hours ago with support for iOS 12.3-12.3.1 and iOS 12.4.1-12.4.8 on a small number of handsets including the iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, and iPad Air 1st generation. For what it’s worth, iOS 12.4.8 is the latest firmware that can be installed on these specific devices, making today’s unc0ver update a particularly significant win for the jailbreak community.

Shortly after the aforementioned release, the unc0ver team pushed a second update to its jailbreak tool, this time dubbed unc0ver v5.3.1. The news was first shared Wednesday afternoon by the unc0ver team via Twitter:

Unc0ver updated to v5.3.0 with support for iOS 12.4.8 & more on older handsets

Anthony Bouchard ∙ July 23, 2020

Team unc0ver launched an updated version of the unc0ver jailbreak tool Thursday afternoon in a move that brings it up to version 5.3.0.

Citing the official announcement shared by the unc0ver team’s Twitter account, the updated jailbreak tool adds support for Apple’s new iOS 12.4.8 firmware for older devices such as the iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, and first-generation iPad Air:

iAutoReply lets you configure automatic responses for text messages & iMessages

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated May 25, 2021

If can be tough, if not nearly impossible, to respond to every text message or iMessage throughout the day. This is especially true if you’ve got a lot of friends and a busy schedule. Fortunately, a newly released jailbreak tweak called iAutoReply by iOS developer MeBlackHat is here to help our friends know that their messages aren’t falling on deaf ears.

Just as the tweak’s name implies, iAutoReply offers many flexible features for users who might want to configure automatic replies for text messages or iMessages that they can’t reply to right away. Not only can iAutoReply be configured for global message responses, but it can also be configured to reply to certain contacts in a different way.

Brandon Plank launches open source RootlessJB4 for iOS 12.0-12.4.7 on A7-A11 devices

Anthony Bouchard ∙ July 12, 2020

More good news surfaced for the jailbreak community this weekend as hacker and iOS tinkerer Brandon Plank launched a new open source semi-untethered rootless jailbreak that supports all versions of iOS 12 dubbed RootlessJB4.

Rootless jailbreaks are essentially a category of jailbreak that avoid messing with the device’s root filesystem. As you might come to expect, this makes them more restrictive than their full-fledged jailbreak counterparts, such as checkra1n or unc0ver. On the other hand, rootless jailbreaks are, by nature, more difficult to detect by apps that implement jailbreak detection.

Unc0ver jailbreak updated to v5.2.1 with bug fixes & improvements

Anthony Bouchard ∙ July 8, 2020

Hot off the heels of a heated DMCA battle between the Electra Team and the unc0ver Team Tuesday evening, the unc0ver jailbreak has received its first update in nearly a month, officially bringing the jailbreak tool up to version 5.2.1.

The update was announced via the unc0ver Team’s official Twitter account early Wednesday morning, and from what we can gather, it mostly appears to be a bug fix update.

This tweak prevents photos taken in the Messages app from saving to the Camera Roll

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated August 2, 2021

It’s easy to send someone a freshly-captured photograph via the iPhone’s Messages app all thanks to a dedicated button located just to the left of the text input field. Upon capturing a photograph this way and sending it, iOS automatically saves a copy of that photograph to the Camera Roll so that the user can reference it later on.

Apple had good intentions here no doubt, but in many cases, we find ourselves navigating to the Photos app after capturing and sending a photograph in the Messages app to delete it from our Camera Roll afterward. I can personally relate to this particular dilemma, and that’s one reason why I’m excited to share the likes of a newly released and free jailbreak tweak dubbed Don’tSaveMessagePhotos by iOS developer lint.

Jailbreak tweaks of the week: Iris, Kai, TypeCentury, and more…

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated July 10, 2020

If you were lucky enough to jailbreak iOS or iPadOS 13.5 before Apple stopped signing it earlier in the week, then you’re probably wondering what you can do to make your device more fun to use. That’s where jailbreak tweaks come into play, and it’s one of the reasons we’ve curated this roundup for you.

This roundup will encompass all the latest jailbreak tweaks we’ve showed you from Monday, June 7th to Sunday, June 14th. As usual, we’ll kick things off by discussing our favorites first, and then wrap things up with the rest afterward. These lists are alphabetized for referencing purposes.

How to boot into Safe Mode with the unc0ver jailbreak

Anthony Bouchard ∙ June 14, 2020

If your iPhone or iPad is jailbroken, then it can be easy to go overboard with installing jailbreak tweaks. While the primary purpose of most jailbreak tweaks is to make your handset better, it’s always possible for a buggy or poorly coded tweak to go rogue and cause more harm than good; sometimes rendering your entire handset momentarily inoperable.

While some panic at the aforementioned thought, especially when it happens to their own jailbroken device, it’s not always necessary to restore your device and lose your jailbreak. In fact, the unc0ver jailbreak supports a function that lets you boot into a no-tweak state tantamount to the likes of no-substrate mode so that you can safely launch Cydia and uninstall the offending tweak(s). We’ll show you how that’s done in this tutorial.

How to boot into Safe Mode with the checkra1n jailbreak

Anthony Bouchard ∙ June 13, 2020

Jailbreaking can be both a fun pastime and a way of making your iPhones and iPads capable of functionality that Apple doesn’t empower them with out of the box. Unfortunately, not all jailbreak tweaks work as expected, and in some cases, buggy or poorly coded tweaks may render your device temporarily unusable.

But fear not, as you probably won’t need to restore your device and lose your jailbreak data. The checkra1n jailbreak tool incorporates a Safe Mode mechanism that can be used to boot your jailbroken iPhone or iPad into a no-substrate-like mode in which jailbreak tweaks don’t load. You will, however, be able to launch Cydia and uninstall the offending tweak(s). We’ll show you how to do that in this tutorial.