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.

Ryan Petrich’s MailMend jailbreak tweak fixes a vulnerability in iOS’ Mail app

Anthony Bouchard ∙ April 24, 2020

Earlier today, we showed you a new jailbreak tweak called CaptureTheFlag that could be installed to patch a rather tedious text message-centric bug in which someone could send you a string of text from the Sindhi language to ‘freeze’ or ‘crash’ your iPhone. A great add-on to have if you’re jailbroken, but perhaps not the only one…

Yet another new jailbreak tweak release dubbed MailMend by iOS developer Ryan Petrich claims to patch a vulnerability that was only just recently discovered and disclosed in iOS’ native emailing app (Mail) by cybersecurity company ZecOps.

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CaptureTheFlag fixes the Sindhi text message glitch for iOS jailbreakers

Anthony Bouchard ∙ April 24, 2020

If you’ve been following the news lately, then you’ve unquestionably heard about the latest text message bug affecting the iOS platform that can crash or freeze the recipient’s iPhone. Demonstrations of the glitch were published all over YouTube and internet news sources yesterday afternoon, and reveal that characters of the Sindhi language are the primary culprit.

Apple will unquestionably address this issue in a future software update to iOS and iPadOS, but jailbreakers who want to avoid updating to new software releases will be excited to learn that there’s now an unofficial patch by way of a newly released jailbreak tweak dubbed CaptureTheFlag by iOS developer MTAC.

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Edictus lets users create Dynamic & Live iOS wallpapers for free

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated August 9, 2021

Just last week, we took an in-depth look at a jailbreak tweak dubbed DynaWall that permitted users to create Dynamic and Live wallpapers for their iOS device. With it, users could expand their handset’s wallpaper options when switching between dark and light modes. And if that wasn’t enough, users could even create their own animated Live wallpapers.

DynaWall was certainly an impressive release, but the full version also came with a price tag. That’s one reason why we’re particularly excited to share the release of a new free jailbreak tweak called Edictus by iOS developers aboutzeph and Soongyu Kwon.

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Add some character to your Status Bar with WonderBar

Anthony Bouchard ∙ April 24, 2020

The Status Bar is something that iPhone and iPad users alike will have in their field of view most of the time, unless of course those users are using a lot of full-screen apps like games. With that in mind, it may come as no surprise that this is one of the first things that jailbreakers like to customize after liberating their handset from Apple’s control.

Say hello to WonderBar, a newly released and free jailbreak tweak by iOS developer Aryan Nambiar that provides what seems like boundless customization for the battery percentage display and more in your pwned handset’s Status Bar.

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CoolStar’s new Chimera1n script brings the Chimera bootstrap to checkra1n devices

Anthony Bouchard ∙ April 22, 2020
Chimera Banner Image.

Electra Team lead developer CoolStar on Wednesday released a new script-based utility dubbed Chimera1n for iOS devices that have been liberated by the popular checkra1n jailbreak tool.

Chimera1n replaces the native checkra1n bootstrap on the checkra1n jailbreak with the Chimera bootstrap. In doing so, it provides users with the Sileo package manager and a Substitute/Libhooker-based alternative to Cydia Substrate for tweak injection.

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Sileo v1.7.5 beta 1 adds repo exporting, tweak editorials, & bug fixes

Anthony Bouchard ∙ April 21, 2020

Just last night, the Sileo Team had announced that the Sileo package manager would turn a new leaf by becoming an open-source project for the very first time, ensuring a more transparent future going forward.

Several hours later, Sileo Team lead developer CoolStar seeded an updated beta release of Sileo dubbed version 1.7.5 beta 1 via the official Discord channel so that beta testers could go hands-on with it and try it out:

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Meteorite gets iOS 13 support, adds live weather to the Status Bar & Weather icon

Anthony Bouchard ∙ April 20, 2020

We’ve seen a lot of jailbreak tweaks over the years that could animate the Home screen’s Weather icon with the current weather information outside. But with the jailbreak community taking a hard shift toward iOS 13 in recent months, modern necessities call for modern solutions.

Meteorite is a free extension created by iOS developer qwertyuiop1379 that has been out for quite a while, but just recently picked up support for iOS 13. Like other tweaks in the past, Meteorite animates the Weather app icon with current weather conditions, but it also adds a new display to the Status Bar.

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Security researcher achieves tfp0 exploit on A13 device running iOS 13.4.1

Anthony Bouchard ∙ April 19, 2020
Matrix code hacked iPhone.

Jailbreakers with access to an A7-A11 device pretty much have it made thanks to the hardware exploit-based checkra1n jailbreak that can’t be patched by Apple in a software update. Those handling newer devices, such as the A12 and A13 varieties, instead depend on infrequently released tfp0 exploits. These seem to surface sporadically with no rhyme or reason, and they can unfortunately be patched by Apple’s software updates.

On a more positive note, it does appear that a skilled security researcher going by the Twitter handle @ProteasWang has achieved tfp0 on an A13-equipped handset running iOS 13.4.1. This is currently the latest version of iOS available from Apple, and with that in mind, the news has particularly exciting implications for jailbreaks such as unc0ver and the to-be-released Chimera13 tool.

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Jailbreak tweaks of the week: Ainsworth, DynaWall Lite, Nougat, Veza, and more…

Anthony Bouchard ∙ April 19, 2020

Most people are getting accustomed to staying at home as much as possible due to COVID-19, but that doesn’t mean we may not get bored once in a while. Fortunately, customizing your jailbroken handset is always a fun pastime that can help make staying at home more fun.

In this roundup, we’ll discuss all the latest jailbreak tweaks released from Monday, April 13th to Sunday, April 19th. As usual, we’ll kick things off by discussing our favorite releases first and then wrap things up with an outline of the rest afterward.

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Ainsworth upgrades iOS’ pairing interface for all your favorite accessories

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated July 18, 2023

If you’ve ever paired a set of AirPods or Beats-branded headphones with your iPhone before, then you should be vividly familiar with the unique Bluetooth pairing experience that you’re presented with when you bring these devices close to your iPhone for the first time. Apple describes the experience as magical, and that’s no lie.

But if you’re pairing any other brand of device with your iPhone, be it a pair of headphones or perhaps a speaker for that matter, you’ll find that the pairing experience isn’t quite as magical. Apple does this on purpose to make its products stand out, but if you want a similar pairing experience for your third-party accessories, then you can take advantage of a newly released jailbreak tweak dubbed Ainsworth by iOS developer Dave van Wijk to do just that.

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This tweak lets you clear an app’s cache right from the Home screen

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated December 28, 2021

More than five years ago, iOS developer Ryan Petrich released a handy cache-clearing jailbreak tweak for apps on jailbroken iPhones and iPads called CacheClearer, which allows users to delete app caches right from iOS’ native Storage settings page. That same tweak was re-created for iOS 11 last year with the aid of developer Julio Verne, and has now been reincarnated once more for newer versions of iOS by developer alex_png.

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