In an unfortunate bout of news for the jailbreak community, Apple made the decision to stop signing iOS 15.6 RC (release candidate) late Friday evening.
While no official iOS 15 release has been signed for the past several months, iOS 15.6 RC remained signed up until last month, making it a popular suggestion for downgrading for anyone who wanted to wait there for a jailbreak release.
Sadly, with iOS 15.6 RC now unsigned, prospective jailbreakers have no choice but to install iOS 16, which currently only carries a jailbreak on A9-A11 chip-equipped devices by way of the palera1n tool, which utilizes the unpatchable checkm8 bootrom exploit. Newer devices can’t currently be jailbroken on iOS 16.
In another important side note, users of the popular FutureRestore downgrading tool are currently being advised not to use the tool until further notice on devices that are capable of running iOS 16.
The PSA first came about in a comment shared to the Sileo & Odyssey Team Discord channel late last night:
Some of the highlights in the PSA include:
– FutureRestore is currently dysfunctional when executing a restore to a version of iOS 16 that is not the latest version available
– Provided the issue with FutureRestore is resolved, iOS 16 SEP and BB remains incompatible with any versions lower than 16.0 which will result in activation failures and/or total boot loops or restore failures
– Any attempts in this current dysfunctional state will result in restore failures. Please do not attempt unless you know what you’re doing until further notice. You will have to restore to the latest in iTunes provided you attempt and you will most likely lose any/all data that is on the device
– Devices that have been maxed out on iOS 15 (those that can’t be upgraded to iOS 16 because they’re too old) will continue to work with FutureRestore in terms of SEP and Baseband compatibility
So what does all of this mean? TL;DR:
- Apple is no longer signing iOS 15.6 RC, which means there’s no “official” way to downgrade from iOS 16 to iOS 15 anymore.
- FutureRestore is not functionally stable enough to use on devices capable of running iOS 16, but it should be safe to use if your device isn’t capable of running iOS 16, such as if iOS 15 is the latest firmware it can run.
What are your thoughts regarding the latest information on firmware status and FutureRestore dysfunction on iOS 16? Let us know in the comments section down below.