Just last week, the RootHide development team shared that it was working on a Procursus-based bootstrap for TrollStore 2 devices, which was intended to bring a jailbreak-like environment to iPhones and iPads running TrollStore 2.
Since that announcement, a lot has happened. Not only has ElleKit developer @eveiyneee accomplished ElleKit-based tweak injection on devices supporting the kernel file descriptor (kfd) and CoreTrust bugs, but the RootHide development team also made their TrollStore 2-based bootstrap available for public beta testing.
Citing the project’s GitHub page, this is a full-featured bootstrap for iOS & iPadOS 14.0-17.0 and it works with devices donning A8-A17 or M1 & M2 chips. Making use the bootstrap requires a Mac, as you’ll need to use Xcode development tools to get it up and running on your device. The full details below:
You’ll need MacOS to build, as you require Xcode Command Line Tools. If you don’t have Xcode installed, you can install the Command Line Tools by itself by running
xcode-select --install.1) Update your theos to the this
bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/roothide/theos/master/bin/install-theos)"This build of Theos is consistently updated.
2) Build
Bootstrap.tipa
make package3) Transfer
Bootstrap.tipafrom./packages/to your device and install it with TrollStore!
Once installed, users will find a Bootstrap app on their Home Screen:
You can tap on this app to find a Bootstrap button that you can tap to install the necessary apps and files; after which, you can add sources to either the Sileo or Zebra package manager apps and install compatible tweaks. You will also need to enable the AppEnabler feature in the app to enable app-based tweak injection.
Please note that not all jailbreak tweaks are compatible with TrollStore 2. Many jailbreak tweaks will need to be converted for compatibility, and many tweaks won’t work at all because RootHide’s bootstrap for TrollStore 2 does not support SpringBoard tweak injection – only injection of tweaks into apps. This could change in the future.
It should be assumed that you do all of this at your own risk. Without a proper jailbreak, it seems that there may be increased risk of messing things up with your device. Dopamine jailbreak lead developer @opa334dev appeared to warn against this when a user showed off using his Crane jailbreak tweak on a TrollStore 2 device:
As it would appear, there is a risk of boot-looping your device when using hacks in this manner, so it is generally advised that you don’t use this utility unless the kinks can be worked out or otherwise you know what you’re doing and understand the risks. This warning doesn’t apply only to Crane, but to all jailbreak tweaks in general used this way.
Using jailbreak tweaks on a jailbroken device comes with more safeguards, such as a Safe Mode that your device can enter when something goes wrong. It doesn’t appear that the same protections follow on a TrollStore 2 device, which means that if something goes wrong, you’re more likely to be at the mercy of that issue.
In any case, it’s still very cool to see people trying to expand the possibilities in a world where jailbreaks aren’t raining from trees anymore. With a little luck, perhaps these types of hacks and add-ons can be made safer, and the general public won’t need to be so worried about what it might do to their device.
Are you excited to see where things are going? Let us know in the comments section down below.