Apple released iOS & iPadOS 14.6 to the public in May with some improvements for the company’s mobile operating systems, and as we know with most of Apple’s mobile software updates, they typically come closely trailed by the un-signing of the previous version.
That’s the case this evening, as it appears that Apple has officially stopped signing iOS & iPadOS 14.5.1. With this move, iPhone and iPad owners will no longer be able to easily downgrade from the newer iOS & iPadOS 14.6 using traditional methods.
As we mentioned above, this change only impacts software downgrades using traditional methods. It’s still possible to cheat that system with futurerestore if you saved your device’s .shsh2 blobs while a particular firmware that you intend to downgrade to was still being signed, but that’s beside the point.
The most common use for software downgrades is to put an iPhone or iPad on a jailbreakable firmware. At the time of this writing, the latest available jailbreaks for all devices (Taurine and unc0ver) only support up to iOS & iPadOS 14.3, so this news won’t affect the jailbreak community in a major way. It’s also worth noting that the checkra1n jailbreak can pwn any version of iOS or iPadOS, including 14.6, so long as the device sports an A7-A11 chip.
Jailbreaking aside, other reasons why someone might want to downgrade their handset’s software also exist. For example, when a software upgrade introduces a bug that makes the user experience unbearable, as was the case with iOS & iPadOS 13.2, which caused a terrible bug that managed background processes a bit too aggressively to be useful for anyone. A downgrade would have addressed this for most users, at least temporarily until Apple could release another official update to fix it.
Now that iOS & iPadOS 14.5.1 aren’t being signed anymore, the IPSW.me online utility has been updated to reflect this. The website also offers resources to check which versions of iOS or iPadOS are being signed for your device, and you can use our dedicated downloads page to acquire any firmware you might need for downgrading or upgrading.
Are you peeved that iOS & iPadOS 14.5.1 are no longer being signed? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section down below.