Everything you need to know about the iOS 9.3.3 jailbreak

Pangu certainly took the jailbreak community by storm over the weekend, working with 25PP to launch a working jailbreak for iOS 9.2-9.3.3.

In this piece, we’ll talk about all the caveats to the jailbreak, and everything you need to know about it before you consider jailbreaking your own device(s) and what the future may hold for the current jailbreak.

The state of the jailbreak

Currently, the jailbreak life is looking pretty good. With a fresh new jailbreak for iOS 9.3.3, it opens all kinds of new doors for the jailbreak community to start producing all new jailbreak tweaks for iOS 9 and not only benefits developers who need a platform to test on, but also benefits the users who’ve wanted device customization for so long after accidentally upgrading their devices.

Of course, there are some things that you should know about the current jailbreak. We’ll try and discuss them below to the best of our current knowledge so that you’re in the loop.

The jailbreak is semi-untethered

Semi-untethered is a weird name for this jailbreak, mostly because there’s no tethering part at all. The semi-untethered jailbreak involves running the jailbreak tool from your Windows machine over a Lightning to USB connection once, and then launching an app from your Home screen every time you reboot in order to make Cydia usable again.

You do not lose your jailbreak tweaks every time you reboot your jailbroken device, but Cydia will crash when you try to launch it if you don’t run the jailbreak app from your Home screen after every reboot.

There is a Safari-based jailbreak available

Just about half of a day after the release of the Windows-only jailbreak tool, some well-known jailbreak developers found a way to make the jailbreak possible from the native Safari app on the iOS devices themselves. You can actually just visit the website and install the jailbreak from Safari without connecting to a Windows PC at all.

This process is a lot like the beloved JailbreakMe jailbreak that was all the rage in 2011. On the other hand, the jailbreak is still semi-untethered and the process to reboot is still going to be the same.

To learn more about jailbreaking your device from the Safari web browser, you will want to read our full tutorial.

It’s not in English yet

Pangu says that an English version of the jailbreak tool is coming soon. Right now, all that’s available is a Chinese version for Windows and Safari on the iOS device itself.

For most people, reading Chinese isn’t a second nature, but we’ve published tutorials on iDB that guide you through the process of clicking on the right buttons, even if you’re not fluent in Chinese.

One thing that’s for sure is that Pangu are the ones working on the English jailbreak tool, while 25PP appears to be working separately to iron out the bugs in the initial release.

It requests an Apple ID

The Windows version of the jailbreak tool requests that you enter a valid Apple ID for the sake of installing the jailbreak. It’s needed for the certificate that allows the installation of the semi-untether app. We suggest creating a new phony Apple ID for this process, separate from your real Apple ID.

Alternatively, the Safari-based jailbreak for iOS 9.3.3 doesn’t require an Apple ID at all, so you might prefer that route altogether.

It only supports 64-bit devices

The jailbreak currently only supports 64-bit devices, which means that the iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, and iPhone 5c cannot be jailbroken with this tool. Only the iPhone 5s and later, iPad mini 2 and later, and iPod touch 6th generation can be jailbroken.

The jailbreak relies on certificates that will expire

One of the most under-reported details about this jailbreak is that it relies on a certificate to run. Because of this, the certificate is bound to expire. When this happens, you will need to re-run the jailbreak tool on your Windows machine to install a fresh new certificate.

The Windows jailbreak tool reportedly has a certificate that will expire after 7 days, and this means you’ll need to re-run the tool after a week.

If you jailbroke your device(s) using the Safari web-based method, then some of the tools are offering year-long certificates, which hopefully won’t require refreshing for a full 365 days, although nothing’s guaranteed. For this jailbreak, you’ll just re-visit the website you used to jailbreak your device when the certificate expires, and you’ll re-run it from the Safari web browser to gain a new certificate.

The process is still very much unknown, as it has yet to happen and the jailbreak teams haven’t disclosed much about it yet.

It installs a third-party app store

One of the less desirable things that gets installed on your device after jailbreaking with the new iOS 9.3.3 jailbreak is a third-party app store from 25PP that has long been associated with piracy. The third-party app store may even open the door to malware potential, and so we suggest removing it after the jailbreak is complete.

Removing the third-party app store doesn’t get rid of Cydia, any of your jailbreak tweaks, or the app that is required to perform the semi-untether reboot.

It’s slightly buggy

The jailbreak itself is relatively stable, but the jailbreak process is a bit buggy to say the least. Our first attempt to jailbreak with the Windows tool required 8 consecutive tries in a row to successfully install Cydia.

Some people even say that they’re running across random errors, having trouble getting Cydia to open, and many are even saying that the iPad Pro and iPod touch 6th generation are having problems jailbreaking successfully.

The same Twitter account that claimed 32-bit support is coming by July 27th says that these bugs should be fixed in the next update for the jailbreak tool.

We suggest waiting until a few more tool releases to jailbreak your daily driver, as stability is always very important. Nevertheless, we’ve composed a guide of some of the common errors you could make that may present a lot of the issues you’re having, so be sure to read up on that as well just to make sure you did everything correctly.

Not all jailbreak tweaks work with iOS 9.3.3 yet

You might be getting really excited about your new jailbreak, but keep your pants on. It’s still a very new jailbreak, and it came without any warning, which means developers had no time to prepare for the release.

It may take some time for jailbreak developers to get their devices jailbroken and then test their tweaks for iOS 9.3.3 and update them as necessary. We have a running list of jailbreak tweaks that are currently supported on iOS 9.3.3 and you should check back occasionally.

iOS 9.0.2 jailbreak is more stable

If you’re jailbroken on iOS 9.0.2 with the untethered jailbreak, then I highly suggest you stay put until a full untethered jailbreak is released either for iOS 9.3.3 or iOS 10.

I suggest this because although the semi-untether isn’t very difficult to deal with it’s still more of a hassle than an untethered jailbreak is.

This jailbreak was basically a last-minute release for those who have been waiting a really long time to have a jailbreak again. Given the timing, and the fact that Pangu is also working on an iOS 10 jailbreak, we believe this was just a way to burn an exploit that may have already been patched in iOS 10.

Wrapping up

That’s about all you need to know about the current iOS 9.3.3 jailbreak right now. More information should reveal itself soon, especially as the team releases updated versions of the tool.

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