Developer Mario Ciabarra, best known for his work on big Intelliborn tweaks like MyWi and My3G, is back with a brand new tweak that claims to do some great things for people experiencing Wi-Fi issues on iOS 8. WiFried is the name of his new tweak, and its purpose is to fix the persistent Wi-Fi issues that occur for a lot of iOS 8 users. That sounds good and all, but the question is, will it work?
WiFried allows users to enable and disable AWDL/AirDrop support using a simple toggle. According to Ciabarra, Apple’s choice to use Bonjour over AWDL for AirDrop and AirPlay is the likely cause of the Wi-Fi performance issues. He explains:
I’ve narrowed down the issue to the use of Apple’s Wireless Direct Link (AWDL) that is used for AirDrop, AirPlay, and Gaming connections.
I’ll go out on a limb and say the WiFi issues are because of Apple’s choice of using Bonjour over AWDL and that, given the constraints of the WiFi hardware, this will be difficult to get right.
Interestingly enough, OS X Yosemite users experience similar Wi-Fi network performance issues as well. These issues, like the iOS 8 issues, are related to AWDL. While there’s no specific tweak like WiFried to quickly enable and disable AWDL, users can simply type the following terminal commands in to fix the issue on the desktop:
sudo ifconfig awdl0 down
To reenable AWDL, use the following:
sudo ifconfig awdl0 up
Obviously, if you’re a big AirDrop user and proponent, you may want to think twice about doing this. But most users probably value their Wi-Fi network performance over the convenience that AirDrop brings to the table. I certainly do, and haven’t hesitated to use both WiFried and the OS X terminal commands. I’ve regularly complained about the terrible Wi-Fi performance on both my Mac and iPhone 6 Plus, so I’m anxious to see how this helps over the long term.
I’ll be sure to report back with my findings. In the meantime, I highly recommend that you read Mario’s uber-detailed post on the issue, where he explains how he came up with this solution.
Have you tried WiFried yet? If so, what have you found? Does it fix your Wi-Fi issues? You can get WiFried for free via Cydia’s BigBoss repo. Sound off down below in the comments section.