Back in January, we shared the news about PureKFD developer lrdsn0w apparently deciding to make a new package manager app as a Sileo and Zebra alternative for jailbroken devices, and it would be called PurePKG.
Just this morning, lrdsnow shared via a post on X (formerly Twitter) that PurePKG v1.0 was now available to the masses via their GitHub repository, adding that it was fully open source and built to work on almost every Apple device running iOS 14+, tvOS 14+, macOS 13+, watchOS 8+, and visionOS 1.0+.
According to the description posted on the GitHub page, PurePKG is built entirely using SwiftUI and is intended to be a customization-focused package manager app.
Using PurePKG requires that your device be bootstrapped one way or another, whether that’s with a full-fledged jailbreak like Dopamine or palera1n or with the RootHide Procursus-based bootstrap via TrollStore.
You can install PurePKG one of two ways, including by downloading it from the GitHub page or by adding a repository to your existing jailbreak’s package manager app and downloading and installing it that way. The package manager app repository is as follows:
https://lrdsnow.github.io/PurePKG/
It’s important to note that while PurePKG is an alternative to Sileo for jailbroken devices as far as searching for, installing, and managing jailbreak tweaks, themes, and apps is concerned, this product still makes use of software originally developed by the Sileo Team. This is highlighted on the GitHub page, effectively meaning it’s a shiny new face put on the Sileo Team’s APT Wrapper.
The project also credits Icons8 for the use of Plumpy icons throughout the PurePKG app.
In my experience with PurePKG so far, none of the .deb files hosted on the GitHub page would install via Sileo at all (I always got a bad Deb error message) and the jailbreak repository would not load to save my life. But I was able to install the .tipa version for TrollStore to test out, and it looks nice, but you can definitely tell it’s a v1.0 release because I experienced repository refresh errors and a few other headaches that just don’t happen in Sileo. I’m sure many of these issues will smooth out as v1.0 evolves with future updates.
There have been many attempts to make jailbreak package manager apps to compete with the bigger defaults (remember Saily?), but to this day, Sileo and Zebra remain the most popular options. That said, it will be interesting to see how PurePKG fares and whether the package manager app will receive regular updates with new features and improvements for a while to come.
Are you going to try out the PurePKG package manager app on your jailbroken device? Be sure to let us know why or why not in the comments section down below.