Augment your jailbroken iPhone’s NFC tag interaction capabilities with Aemulo

Like so many other smartphones on the market today, iPhones support NFC (near field communication) capabilities. NFC is frequently used by Apple Pay and by compatible NFC tags.

One thing that sets iPhones apart from much of the competition, however, is that Apple has made them more restrictive with respect to what you can and can’t do with the device’s built-in NFC hardware.

iOS developer elihwyma wanted to make the iPhone’s NFC capabilities more accessible to users, and consequently, released a new jailbreak tweak dubbed Aemulo for that exact purpose.

As noted in the tweak’s depiction, Aemulo lets users read, write, and emulate NFC tags from a dedicated app. It also lets the user add frequently used NFC cards to their iPhone’s Wallet app so they can be swiftly summoned for use, even from the Lock Screen.

Aemulo’s dedicated app allows for adding and managing NFC tags. Not only does it support modern iOS aesthetics, but it’s user-friendly too, as depicted in the screenshot examples above.

With Aemulo, users can even send commands to NFC tags and to their iPhone’s integrated NFC chip. Further, users can enable background NFC tag reading for NDEF tags on older handsets that don’t typically support this feature, all without needing an app open to do so.

For anyone wondering, Aemulo supports emulation of Desfire and ISO-Dep-type NFC tags right out of the box, however the developer says they are actively working to add support for more including MiFare types.

As for the devices Aemulo supports, the developer says all jailbroken iPhones running iOS 13 or later should be supported, however the iPhone 6s/6s Plus and first-generation iPhone SE have only limited NFC reading support and no writing support. That said, newer handsets have more to gain from Aemulo.

One thing we found interesting about Aemulo is that it can operate without an internet connection, however an internet connection will be required when adding NFC tags to the Wallet app since they require code signing by Apple. Also, passes added to the Wallet app will only work in a jailbroken state with tweak injection enabled, and consequently, they won’t work via Apple Watches.

The concept behind Aemulo is rather similar to that of a previously released jailbreak tweak called NFCWriter, however the developer claims that no expense was spared in the development of Aemulo to provide proper iOS 14 support and better stability.

If you’ve got NFC tags to tinker with and Aemulo sounds like something you’d like to try, then you can purchase the tweak for $1.49 from the Chariz repository via your favorite package manager app. A free trial is also available via the Chariz repository for those interested in giving it a try.

Will you be going hands-on with Aemulo to tinker with your NFC tags? Discuss in the comments section down below.