Zebra package manager officially debuts for jailbroken iOS 9-13 devices

Cydia has enjoyed its throne as the king of package managers on jailbroken handsets for more than a decade, but are we quickly entering a day and age where the tried and true Cydia will pass on the torch to something new?

One might be inclined to think so; especially now that Zebra, a popular third-party alternative to Cydia, is kicking off the new year in 2020 with an official public release. Zebra has been in beta testing for quite some time, but as of Wednesday afternoon, the package manager is no longer in beta, and it should be safe enough for the general public to go ahead and try on their own.

Zebra offers a new take on package management for jailbroken iOS devices. Zebra is fully open-source and has been built with speed and efficiency in mind. Moreover, Zebra natively supports dark mode and custom app icon management, allowing you to add a personal touch to the app as well.

It’s worth noting that Cydia runs on virtually any and every version of pwnable iOS, whereas Zebra only supports iOS 9 through 13. That’s a small compromise to make, however, as most jailbroken handsets today are running a version of iOS somewhere in the middle of that sweet spot.

Unlike Cydia, and even the Sileo Team’s Sileo package manager, Zebra has never enjoyed the luxury of being a default option on any jailbreak before, and it still isn’t one to this day. The checkra1n team is likely to add Zebra to its checkra1n installer app in the near future, however, especially now that the package manager is officially out of beta.

Those interested in trying Zebra right now rather than waiting for the checkra1n loader to add support can follow the steps in our detailed step-by-step tutorial.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the Sileo Team launched an ‘official’ Sileo installer tool for the checkra1n jailbreak, but it stirred up some ruckus after it was found to uninstall Cydia and checkra1n jailbreak dependencies with no official way of undoing it without restoring and re-jailbreaking. Fortunately, the Zebra installation experience is nothing like that whatsoever – it leaves Cydia and all the checkra1n jailbreak’s dependencies intact.

Are you excited to see another package manager entering the jailbreak game? Discuss whether you’ll be trying it out or not in the comments.