Anthony Bouchard

Anthony Bouchard joined the iDownloadBlog.com team in 2016 after originally covering Apple and iPhone jailbreak news at ModMyi.com. As an experienced editor, he brings more than 15 years’ worth of jailbreaking knowledge to our in-depth guides, opinion pieces, and news articles. His passion for device customization and user choice sparks his strong push to empower readers with the tools they need to explore and enjoy the freedom that comes with jailbreaking. Anthony blogs about not only jailbreaking, but also Apple software & accessories, drones & photography, and Nintendo gaming systems. Anthony honed his advanced technical knowledge over the years with hands-on projects ranging from gaming PC builds to engine repair mechanics. His never-ending hunger for knowledge is why you’ll always find him tinkering – tearing things apart and putting them back together to understand what makes them tick.

LongKeys makes it easier to type several instances of the same Emoji

Anthony Bouchard ∙ December 3, 2020

Emojis have quickly transformed into one of the most popular ways to share expressions and reactions via messaging and social media platforms. If you’ve ever wanted to enter several of the same Emoji into a text field, however, then you’d find yourself tapping the Emoji key of your choosing repeatedly until satisfied.

LongKeys is a newly released and free jailbreak tweak by iOS developer maximehip that tries to take the edge off of this user experience by allowing typists to simply tap and hold on an Emoji key of their choosing to input several instances of that particular Emoji into the text field all at once.

Chimera jailbreak updated to v1.5.1 with more bug fixes and improvements

Anthony Bouchard ∙ December 2, 2020

If you’ve been paying attention to the Odyssey Team’s Discord channel or Twitter page recently, then you’ve likely witnessed the sudden priority shift to the iOS 12-centric Chimera jailbreak – a notable departure from the team’s typical precedence, the iOS & iPadOS 13-centric Odyssey jailbreak.

The sudden attention to Chimera is no coincidence, as Chimera Team lead developer CoolStar had long envisioned back-porting the Odyssey Team’s successes with the Procursus bootstrap and libhooker tweak injection to Chimera. The team officially made it happen with Chimera v1.5 this week, and they’re out with yet another update this Wednesday evening in the form of Chimera v1.5.1:

Radio proximity security attack targeting up to iOS 13.5 detailed by Ian Beer

Anthony Bouchard ∙ December 2, 2020

Accomplished security researcher Ian Beer, known for releasing a host of iOS exploits used by modern jailbreak tools, dropped a bombshell on Twitter late Wednesday evening after sharing a detailed blog post about a jaw-dropping radio proximity exploit affecting up to and including iOS and iPadOS 13.5.

The blog post summary goes on to explain that the hacker can remotely trigger kernel memory corruption through the execution of arbitrary code. Furthermore, it can force affected iOS and iPadOS devices in radio proximity to reboot with no user interaction needed or put privacy at risk by breaching user data or utilizing cameras and microphones without the user’s knowledge. Scary indeed…

Chimera jailbreak updated to v1.5, supports up to iOS 12.4.9 & adds Procursus bootstrap

Anthony Bouchard ∙ December 2, 2020

As iOS 12-using jailbreakers might recall, the Chimera Team issued a new public beta of its Chimera jailbreak tool earlier this week with Procursus bootstrap and full libhooker tweak injection integration and a plethora of backported improvements from the iOS & iPadOS 13-centric Odyssey jailbreak tool.

Early Wednesday morning, however, the Odyssey Team took to Twitter to announce that Chimera version 1.5 had been officially released to the general public without the ‘beta’ asterisk attached to the name:

Grounded bars access to vital Control Center toggles without authentication

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated June 2, 2021

I love how convenient Control Center makes it to toggle my iPhone or iPad’s controls on or off in a pinch, but I’m almost certain that anyone who’d grab my iPhone when I’m not looking might feel exactly the same way. In fact, Control Center makes it far too easy for a thief or mischief-maker to toggle Airplane Mode as a hindrance to handset recovery, and that’s enough to make anyone second-guess the added convenience…

Grounded is a brand new and free jailbreak tweak by iOS developer biD3V that’s designed to prevent such issues from living rent-free in your head. The tweak works by allowing users to make certain Control Center toggles unusable as long as your iPhone or iPad is locked, but they become usable the moment you authenticate yourself.

Tranzlo makes it easy for jailbreakers to translate text in almost any iOS app

Anthony Bouchard ∙ December 1, 2020

Being bilingual has its perks, but since not everyone has the luxury of knowing more than one language by heart, translation services often lend assistance to those wanting to know how to say something in another language. There’s just one problem: accessing said translation services can be cumbersome, often requiring the user to visit a website or switch to another app.

Here to help with the aforementioned dilemma is Tranzlo, a newly released and free jailbreak tweak by iOS developer MiRO92 that aspires to make language translation much less of a chore on iPhones and iPads.

Chimera jailbreak for iOS 12 picks up Procursus & libhooker support in latest beta

Anthony Bouchard ∙ November 30, 2020

While much of the modern jailbreak community is currently focusing on current firmware versions like iOS & iPadOS 13 and 14, that hasn’t stopped the Chimera Team from launching a new beta version of its iOS 12-centric Chimera jailbreak tool.

Chimera Team lead developer CoolStar took to the Announcements section of the official Discord channel bright and early Monday morning to share links to Chimera v1.5.0 beta 1 — the latest public beta of the jailbreak tool for iOS 12 devices:

Ekip brings tighter integration between your jailbroken iPhone and your Mac

Anthony Bouchard ∙ November 30, 2020

AirDrop, iCloud, and a bevy of other services provided by Apple have helped to create a nearly seamless user experience for those owning both an iOS device and a Mac. But if you’ve ever wanted a tighter integration than what already exists, then you’d be S.O.L., at least… without the help of a jailbroken handset.

Fortunately for those who do have jailbroken handset(s) at their disposal, a newly released jailbreak tweak dubbed Ekip by iOS developer maximehip can upgrade the level of integration that users might come to expect while using their iPhone or iPad and their Mac in the same general vicinity.

Upgrade your jailbroken iPhone’s Do Not Disturb indicator with Lune

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated October 27, 2021

Apple’s iPhone and iPad come standard with a notification-hampering feature known as Do Not Disturb, which can keep your handset silent when you don’t feel like being bothered by rings, dings, and other noises. More recently, Do Not Disturb began showing an unsightly banner on the Lock Screen when enabled, and not all users have taken kindly to it.

Lune is a free jailbreak tweak by iOS developer Litten that was just recently rewritten from scratch to provide a new way of discerning when Do Not Disturb is turned on via the Lock Screen. It does so by displaying a configurable Moon icon wherever the user may choose to put it, just as depicted in the screenshot example above.

Team unc0ver announces plan to launch Substitute v2.0 with speed & performance gains

Anthony Bouchard ∙ November 29, 2020

The unc0ver Team has been extraordinarily silent despite FreeTheSandbox and ZecOps releasing a new tfp0 exploit with support for iOS & iPadOS versions 13.5.1-13.7recently , but that silence was broken this Sunday evening following a rather intriguing announcement.

The announcement, shared in a Tweet by the unc0ver Team and retweeted by unc0ver lead developer Pwn20wnd reveals exactly what the team has been working on all this time — a reworked version of Substitute:

Jailbreak tweaks of the week: Boardy, iPadSwitcher, JBStatusNotifier, & more…

Anthony Bouchard ∙ November 29, 2020

The jailbreak community has been filled with all kinds of interesting news recently, with the release of a new iOS 13.5.1-13.7-facing exploit and further updates to popular jailbreak tools like Odyssey to support it. But perhaps the most exciting thing about all of this is the jailbreak tweak side of things — the meat and potatoes that makes jailbreaking worth it.

In this roundup, we’ll talk about all the latest jailbreak tweak releases in one convenient place so that you won’t have to bother searching for all of it yourself. This roundup will encompass all the latest jailbreak tweak releases between Monday, November 23rd and Sunday, November 29th. So without further ado, let’s get started!

iPadSwitcher ports the iPad’s superior App Switcher UI to pwned iPhones

Anthony Bouchard ∙ November 28, 2020

Love it or hate it, the App Switcher is something we use every day while interacting with our iPhones. Not only does it provide a rapid way of returning to recently used applications, but it also lets users force-quit those that aren’t currently needed. Unfortunately, the App Switcher user experience isn’t identical from one platform to another…

Anyone who owns an iPad in addition to an iPhone would be able to attest to just how superior the iPad’s App Switcher user experience feels. Fortunately for jailbreakers, a newly released and free jailbreak tweak dubbed iPadSwitcher by iOS developer dpkg_ can bring that same user experience to pwned iPhones.