Why you should wait until Luca Todesco’s iOS 10 jailbreak is out of beta before using it

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I get asked every day whether or not someone should jailbreak their iOS 10 device right now with Luca Todesco’s beta tool or continue to wait a little longer for a more stable jailbreak release.

In this post, I hope to tackle some of the confusion regarding the tool and help to answer some ongoing questions of whether or not you should jailbreak just yet. Of course, if you don’t have the time to read, the short answer is: no.

Limited Support

Luca Todesco released this jailbreak in its beta stages in the middle of December with support for a small subset of devices, including iOS 10.1-10.1.1 on the iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, and iOS 10.0.1-10.1.1 on the iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone SE, and the iPad Pro.

There’s a truck load of devices that the Yalu jailbreak isn’t currently compatible with, including all iPhones prior to the iPhone 6s, the iPod touch 5th generation, and pretty much every iPad that isn’t an iPad Pro. That said, a large base of users can’t even jailbreak with the tool in the first place yet.

And why? Because the tool is in beta. It’s not ready yet folks!

Why beta?

Yalu is only available right now so that experienced jailbreak developers can use the tool to test critical software or extensions and update them if need be. It’s not meant for the general populous just yet, and the difficulty of deploying the jailbreak at this point in time should be indicative of that.

For example, Saurik has already published a beta version of Cydia for iOS 10, which can be had from a special repository. The beta jailbreak gives him a way to test it so that it will be ready when a public jailbreak launches.

Todesco himself also needs time to test the jailbreak, hence the beta. Most software begins in some sort of pre-release during its early development cycle before it reaches the final stable stages, and the jailbreak is no different.

By having time to test the jailbreak on multiple devices over a period of time, he can take note of all the things that go wrong and fix them in a future release. This is incredibly important, as Todesco calls the Yalu jailbreak “glitchy” in its current stages.

And trust us… you don’t want a “glitchy” iPhone. You will regret it and come down with a condition known as ‘jailbreaker’s remorse.”

About those iOS 10 jailbreak tweaks…

Developers are already releasing jailbreak tweaks for iOS 10, yes, but since Cydia Substrate isn’t yet ready for iOS 10, many of these tweaks can’t even be used yet.

In addition to the tweaks made specifically for iOS 10, many of the jailbreak tweaks from earlier versions of iOS aren’t yet ready for iOS 10, so they’ll land you in Safe Mode crashes, or perhaps even boot loops, which are no bueno.

Todesco has disabled Cydia Substrate by default on the iOS 10 jailbreak to help discourage jailbreakers from taking this risk. While some patches to get around this have been released by other developers, Todesco advises against them because they have the true potential to cause harm to your jailbreak since these patches may not be compatible with future updates for it and may cause you to lose your jailbreak completely upon updating.

And of course, like other jailbreaks in the past, paid jailbreak tweak purchases are currently locked on iOS 10, so you can’t make purchases right now either. You can only download paid jailbreak tweaks if you own them already.

For these reasons alone, jailbreaking iOS 10 with the beta tool isn’t worth it for the casual jailbreaker, and basic users will have a much better time with it if they simply wait for a stable release because then they’ll be able to enjoy their tweaks.

It’s still semi-untethered

There’s no reason to rush, guys. It’s still semi-untethered, just like the Pangu jailbreak for iOS 9.3.3 was. There’s no special magic behind this jailbreak that’s going to make it any more magical than your iOS 9.3.3 jailbreak was, so just take your time.

While there’s probably little or no chance that this jailbreak will ever be untethered because of the amount of work that goes into making it so, semi-untethered jailbreaks seem to be the way of the future.

With a semi-untethered jailbreak, you can still reboot your device normally, but you have to follow unique steps to boot back into a jailbroken state. Fortunately, unlike a tethered jailbreak, you won’t need to connect to a computer to boot a semi-untethered device.

If anything goes wrong…

And last but not least, keep in mind that iOS 10.1.1 is no longer being signed. That said, if you completely botch the attempt to jailbreak iOS 10.1.1 and end up having to restore via iTunes, you will be forced to update to iOS 10.2, which as of this writing isn’t supported by Yalu.

Todesco has said that a future version of the jailbreak tool may support iOS 10.2 on some of Apple’s older devices, like the iPhone 6s and earlier, but even then, Apple is already working on other software updates, such as iOS 10.2.1, and even these updates could get in the way of downgrading back to iOS 10.2 when that day comes.

Since it’s really a one-shot deal since the firmware’s no longer being signed right now, it’s not worth the risk to attempt the jailbreak with beta software at this time.

In fact, if you’re like me and you’re carefully preserving an iOS 10.1.1 device on a shelf somewhere just in case a jailbreak drops, as Luca Todesco advised we all do, then you’re going to take extra care to make sure you don’t goof up and lose it, and trying beta software is very unproductive in relation to that.

While a tool known as Prometheus is under development to help you downgrade your iOS firmware in the future, there are some limitations on the devices that it supports and it’s not quite ready for the prime time just yet as it’s complicated to use and will leave many users confused.

Conclusion

With the odds against you, we think you should hold off on the iOS 10 jailbreak until Luca Todesco is ready to announce that the jailbreak is ready for everyone. Since that hasn’t happened yet, you should really just have some patience and hold off for now. Nevertheless, you should still avoid updating to new iOS firmware if you want to preserve your chances of a jailbreak in the future.

If you’re advanced enough of a user and have confidence in your abilities, you can still attempt the jailbreak (we can’t stop you), but if anything goes wrong, you’ve been warned.