Update: the tool is now entitled Extender: Reloaded, not Extender Installer. Amend your Cydia search accordingly.
Since the release of Yalu for iOS 10, many users have been faced with a new annoyance: the 7-day signing period for their jailbreak app. Without a paid Apple developer account they are forced to connect their devices to their computers once a week to sideload their jailbreak app again.
Whilst this has technically been true for all semi-(un)tethered jailbreaks, it was never an issue with Pangu 9.2-9.3.3 because it came with a one-year certificate, and later a re-jailbreaking website. It was with mach_portal and Yalu102 that the problem became evident.
The first piece of the puzzle came in the form of Saurik’s Cydia Extender, an on-device version of Cydia Impactor which allows re-signing applications on device. However, it (unfortunately and unexpectedly) still required a paid developer account to work. Since then, various unsanctioned versions and modifications have sprung up which remove the paid account requirement, and also resign the app automatically after some time period, which the original didn’t. Whilst some of these solutions work, we didn’t think it right to recommend them to our readers. This was primarily due to their repackaging Saurik’s work without his permission, as well as being hosted on pirate repos.
Now however, a viable middle ground seems to have been struck. Extender: Reloaded (originally entitled Extender Installer), from developer Matt Clarke, does not repackage or redistribute any of Saurik’s code, nor is it hosted on a repo with cracked tools. Instead, it downloads the vanilla Cydia Extender directly from Saurik during the install process, and then applies tweaks to it, much as you might tweak any other app such as WhatsApp or Snapchat.
The tool is still in beta, but in my testing seemed to work perfectly after some initial tinkering. Code for the tweak is available open-source on the dev’s GitHub if you’d like to read through it, and it can be downloaded via Cydia by adding the following repo:
http://repo.incendo.ws
Here is the feature list, in the dev’s own words:
- Automatic re-signing of applications.
- Installation of applications without the need for a VPN/paid dev account.
- Caching of your Apple ID login details, to avoid having to sign-in each time. (Note: sensitive information is stored in the keychain.)
- Basic settings to configure alerts shown by the automatic re-signing.
- A Troubleshooting panel to help with any errors that may occur.
If our readers are interested, I can do a quick guide on how to use Extender: Reloaded and troubleshoot any issues, in the next couple of days. If you can’t wait, you can install now from the repo above, and let me know how you get on. Be sure to fully uninstall all previous instances of Extender (or its third-party variants) before installing this. When out of beta, the tool should be made available on a default repo.
The one downside I’ve noticed so far is its lack of support for iOS 9. Now that Home Depot for 32-bit iOS 9.1-9.3.4 has been released, the 7-day signing problem is not only applicable to 64-bit users on iOS 10. An update to Extender: Reloaded to allow Home Depot jailbreakers to go computer-free too would be appreciated by many. According to the developer such an update is possible, though any changes to Cydia Extender itself would have to be made by Saurik, not Matt Clarke. We’ll have to wait and see on that one.
Would you like to see a guide on installing and configuring Extender: Reloaded? Have you tried it already, and what was the result?