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.

CoolStar says Chimera and Electra jailbreaks will soon ditch Substitute for libsubstrate

Chimera Banner Image.

The Electra Team’s Chimera and Electra jailbreak tools have long utilized Substitute for native tweak injection, but it now seems that this could be on the verge of changing.

Electra Team lead developer CoolStar took to his jailbreak-oriented Discord channel on Thursday to share that his team would no longer maintain Substitute due to its incompatibility with certain jailbreak tweaks and hooking limitations:

Luca Todesco teases Installer on upcoming checkra1n jailbreak

The upcoming checkm8 exploit-based checkra1n jailbreak has been making rounds in headlines over the last couple of weeks, with some of the most exciting news involving tweak injection on iOS 13. But as you might recall, a recent teaser also showed that the checkra1n jailbreak would support several package managers, including Cydia and Zebra.

People were particularly excited to see support for Zebra in addition to the tried and true Cydia package manager, but it begged the question about compatibility with other popular package managers, including Installer and Sileo, just to name a few.

Tweak injection teased on iOS 13 with upcoming checkra1n jailbreak

Things are getting particularly interesting in the world of jailbreaking since the official public release of @axi0mX’s checkm8 bootrom exploit for A5-A11 devices. One of the most intriguing work-in-progresses involving checkm8 has been checkra1n, a jailbreak tool spearheaded by renowned hacker Luca Todesco and others.

While we’ve witnessed quite a few teasers involving the checkra1n jailbreak to date, none have been quite as exciting as one shared just this morning. Jailbreak developer Sam Bingner, well-known for his popular TetherMe jailbreak tweak for enabling native Personal Hotspot on jailbroken handsets with or without carrier consent, teased the tweak functioning on iOS 13 by way of checkra1n:

This tweak forces the Twitter app to show the ‘Latest’ Tweets at all times

Twitter users who use the social network via the official app will notice that it seems to favor “Top” Tweets over “Latest” Tweets in your News Feed. In some cases, it even switches you from Latest to Top without your consent. It’s easy to switch back, but it can be annoying to deal with nonetheless.

I’ve always disliked this about the Twitter mobile app, and for that reason in particular, I’m excited to show you a newly released and free jailbreak tweak dubbed AlwaysLatestTimelineTwitter by iOS developer aesthyrica.

Take Home screen customization to the next level with IconTweak

The Home screen is something you interface with every single day. That said, wouldn’t it be nice if Apple allowed you to do more with it than simply change the wallpaper image and move the app icons around?

If you’re onboard with the aforementioned idea, then you’ll probably take a liking to a new jailbreak tweak called IconTweak by iOS developer ichitaso. With it, you can customize your Home screen’s app icons in new and exciting ways.

Sileo v1.5.1 brings bug fixes and anonymous analytic data collection

It was just last week that Sileo Team lead developer CoolStar announced a controversial development hiatus for the Sileo package manager on the Chimera and Electra jailbreaks. But in an unforeseen turn of events, another update was released late last night.

As shared by the official @GetSileo Twitter page, Sileo v1.5.1 is now available for users and brings new bug fixes and improvements to the app’s user experience:

Safari Electro supercharges the iOS web browsing experience

Apple pours tons of developmental resources into its mobile Safari web browser to make things as fluid as possible for the end user, but that doesn’t change the fact that Safari lacks some features that might be considered useful, especially when moving from Safari for iPad to Safari for iPhone.

If you agree with the statement above, then you’ll want to check out a newly released jailbreak tweak dubbed Safari Electro by iOS developer Minazuki. As you may have inferred from the screenshot examples above already, this tweak supercharges the mobile Safari web browser on the iPhone and iPad with power user features.

PureFocus productively mitigates distractions on jailbroken devices

Smartphones can be incredibly useful tools in day to day life, but let’s face it, they also impose a substantial distraction that can cause even the slightest of procrastinators evade meaningful productivity. For that reason, it’s a good idea for students and professionals to use focus-oriented software.

PureFocus is a newly released jailbreak tweak by iOS developer Dave Van Wijk that helps improve productivity by filtering out distractions on your pwned handset for a user-defined amount of time.

New teaser shows checkra1n jailbreak running Cydia and Zebra

With a resource as powerful as @axi0mX’s checkm8 bootrom exploit floating around in the wild, it’s should come as no surprise to anyone that prominent members of the jailbreak community are actively working on tools that take advantage of it. One of the most significant of those is checkra1n, a project that is currently being spearheaded by renowned hacker and Yalu jailbreak lead developer Luca Todesco.

It’s been a little over a week since we last heard anything new about checkra1n, but based on what we saw at the time, it would seem things are falling into place quite nicely. Now, a new Tweet shared Sunday afternoon by the official checkra1n Twitter page reveals what appears to be working package managers installed on an iPhone X, iPhone SE, and a seventh-generation iPod touch.

Jailbreak tweaks of the week: PowerGuard, Xeon, and more

While it’s possible to enjoy a jailbreak on iOS 11 or 12 right now by way of Chimera, Electra, or unc0ver, we’re particularly excited about the future as the checkm8 bootrom exploit lights the way for a bright future for the community.

If you’re as fired up about jailbreaking as we are, then you’re probably looking for ways to customize your pwned handset. In this roundup, we’ll show you all the latest jailbreak tweak releases from the past week. As always, we’ll start by showcasing our favorites and wrap things up with an outline afterward.

Cydia Installer update addresses unresponsive tab button bug

If you’re currently jailbroken with Pwn20wnd’s unc0ver tool, then you may want to launch the Cydia app from your Home screen and refresh your sources.

According to a Tweet shared just this weekend by unc0ver co-developer Sam Bingner, a hot-fix for the Cydia Installer is now available that resolves a particularly irritating bug in which buttons in the app’s tab bar would become unresponsive to a user's taps:

CoolStar says Sileo development is ‘suspended until further notice’

Electra Team lead developer CoolStar took to Discord just this past week with a rather unfortunate update for Chimera and Electra jailbreak users: development on the platforms’ proprietary Sileo package manager has been suspended “until further notice.”

Citing the announcement, the decision to put Sileo’s development on hiatus stems from two significant factors, with the first being that CoolStar isn’t happy with Sileo’s acceptance rate in the jailbreak community and the other being out of exhaustion from contributing more to the project than the other project developers: