NFCWriter X lets hobbyists and tinkerers unlock the iPhone’s full NFC potential

Just over a year ago, iOS developer Elias Limneos announced a ground-breaking jailbreak tweak called NFCWriter that enabled iPhone users to tap into the full potential of the NFC (Near Field Communication) chip embedded within their handset. This week, Limneos continues that fun with NFCWriter X for iOS, which can only be described as the latest iteration of the tweak.

NFCWriter X for iOS is intended for advanced users and tinkerers with an interest in playing around with NFC tags, Credit/Debit Cards, MRTD documents, and more directly from your iPhone. Nearly anything with NFC support can be tinkered with by NFCWriter X for iOS.

Right out of the box, NFCWriter X for iOS supports the following features:

  • Read many common tag types
  • Write to tags
  • Copy tags
  • Copy to multiple tags
  • Format tags
  • Read or write NDEF messages
  • Read or write to almost all types of tags
  • Emulate tags with UID and NDEF message emulation via ISO-DEP protocol
  • Manage and save tags in one handy place
  • Scan tags in the background with NFCWriter for iOS minimized or iPhone locked
  • Perform actions based on the content of the tag
  • Display information about tags (manufacturer, serial number, type, memory size, ATQA, SAK, etc.)
  • Read EMV cards (credit/debit cards)
  • Read MRTD documents (passports, ID Cards, NFC-enabled driver licenses)
  • Serve a tag from one handset and emulate it remotely
  • Send manual commands to tags
  • And much more…

Not everyone is an IoT expert, NFC researcher, or NFC hobbyist and has an arsenal of NFC devices sitting around at home. That said, not everyone will have a use for NFCWriter X for iOS, but it’s still an impressive release.

Citing Limneos, NFCWriter X for iOS doesn’t just utilize Apple’s own NFC framework, but it actually goes beyond that. NFCWriter X for iOS can manage NFC devices on a driver level, which makes it more powerful than any native or App Store-centric app could ever hope to be. Fortunately, it does all of that without compromising your Apple Pay or handset security.

As it would seem, NFC technology is so much more capable than Apple leads on with its limited feature set on the iPhone. That said, it’s actually rather incredible that Limneos scraped something like this together for the jailbreak community to tinker with.

If you’re interested in trying NFCWriter X for iOS, then you can download it for free from Cydia’s BigBoss repository. Upon installation, a prompt in the tweak’s preference pane will prompt you to purchase NFCWriter X for iOS for $3.99.

NFCWriter X for iOS plays nicely with all NFC-enabled iPhones running a jailbroken installation of iOS 10 or iOS 11; this encompasses the iPhone 6S and later.

Do you have any plans to download and experiment with NFCWriter X for iOS? Share in the comments section below.