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.

Luca Todesco achieves tfp0 on developer beta of iOS 13

Matrix code hacked iPhone.

It was only a week ago that security researcher iBSparkes teased the Cydia package manager running on an iPhone with the first developer beta of iOS 13 installed on it, but as it would seem, that was just the tip of the iceberg.

Apple deployed the second developer beta of iOS 13 just yesterday afternoon, and a new teaser shared just this morning by security researcher and Yalu jailbreak developer Luca Todesco appears to show a working tfp0 exploit running on it:

This tweak augments Safari on iOS with new gestures and features

If you’re jailbroken by way of Chimera or unc0ver, then you can now take advantage of a jailbreak tweak dubbed Sleipnizer for Safari (iOS 9-12) by iOS developer r_plus to augment the usability of your handset’s native Safari web browser.

Fresh out of the box, Sleipnizer for Safari bakes a plethora of new gestures and shortcuts into Safari experience. Among those are:

NotchControl expands your iPhone’s notch with more features

Love it or hate it, most of Apple’s modern-day mobile devices come standard with a top-of-display notch that houses the TrueDepth camera system used by Face ID for biometric authentication and for selfie images. Now that the notch has become the norm, the best thing you can do is embrace it; but why not go a step further and expand it?

NotchControl is a new free jailbreak tweak by iOS developer PeterDev that builds upon the notch’s native aesthetics and functionality. With it, you can incorporate new controls and information displays into the notch, such as things that pertain to music, time, or weather.

Shenmue ensures that you won’t forget upcoming plans or events ever again

Lots of people pack their iOS handsets’ Calendar app with upcoming plans and events, and we find it particularly alarming that Apple still doesn’t persistently display those plans and events on the Lock screen to prevent users from forgetting about them as the week goes on.

Given the circumstances, we’re particularly excited to show you a newly-released and free jailbreak tweak called Shenmue by iOS developer maximehip, which resolves the aforementioned problem by displaying a specialized event widget on the Lock screen with a persistent reminder regarding what’s still to come.

LastUnlock displays the last time your iPhone was unlocked on the Lock screen

If you have a jailbroken handset in your possession and you’re paranoid that someone might know your passcode and that they might be logging into your device when you aren’t looking, then you just might come to appreciate a newly-released and free jailbreak tweak dubbed LastUnlock by iOS developer Smokin1337.

As indicated by the screenshot example above, LastUnlock records the most recent date and time that your handset was unlocked (whether it was by you or someone else) and displays it on the Lock screen where the ‘press Home to unlock’ or ‘swipe up to unlock’ text would typically appear.

Jailbreak tweaks of the week: Axon, ImageCorrect, InstallProtect12, and more

The jailbreak tweak release schedule has slowed down a little bit since the WWDC 2019 Keynote, presumably because developers are absorbing all the new features to come and pondering about how these ideas can be used to improve existing versions of iOS. That said, we expect that releases will pick up at their normal pace again soon enough.

In this roundup, we’ll discuss all of this past week’s jailbreak tweak releases in one convenient place. As usual, we’ll kick things off by discussing our favorite releases in detail and then we’ll outline the rest of them afterward.

Colorize your iOS apps’ activity indicators with Spoke

As you use iOS, you’ll become accustomed to seeing activity indicators in many of your apps. The activity indicator is denoted by a spinning wheel, such as what you might see when certain apps load or begin communicating with the internet.

iOS’ activity monitors are typically monotonous, serving no other purpose besides letting you know that an app is doing something; but that doesn’t mean they need to be boring. A newly-released and free jailbreak tweak dubbed Spoke by iOS developer Unicorn808 lets you colorize these activity monitors.

iPhone hobbyist claims to have ported iOS 13 beta 1 to the iPhone 6 [updated]

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve likely heard about Apple’s upcoming iOS 13 for iPhone and iPod touch (iPad gets its own new operating system dubbed iPadOS), which implements native dark mode and a plethora of other jaw-dropping features that users have been requesting from Apple for quite some time. On the other hand, the oldest handsets it supports out of the box are the iPhone SE, 6s, and 6s Plus.

In a seemingly unbelievable turn of events, however, an Apple device tinkerer with the Twitter handle @NighttigerFTW has purportedly managed to get the first iOS 13 beta running on an iPhone 6 with minimal tweaking. The full details below:

How to add the BigBoss repository to Sileo

In case you missed it, @0ptimo has officially implemented SHA256 for the BigBoss repository, paving the way for full Sileo support. CoolStar has announced that an upcoming Sileo update will implement the official BigBoss repository out of the box, but why wait?

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how you can add the official BigBoss repository to your Sileo package manager right now.

BigBoss repository now uses SHA256, paving the way for Sileo support

In an unexpected turn of events this weekend, @0ptimo added official SHA256 support to the BigBoss repository, a move that looks to appease the Sileo Team as an increasing number of people use the Electra Team’s Chimera jailbreak to take advantage of the full-fledged A12(X) support in the here and now.

Sileo Team lead developer CoolStar acknowledged the change just this evening via Twitter, noting that an upcoming update for the Sileo package manager will implement native support for the newly-upgraded BigBoss repository:

InstallProtect12 makes you authenticate yourself to install or uninstall jailbreak packages

InstallProtect12 is a newly released and free jailbreak tweak created by iOS developer Castyte, and we’re particularly excited to show it to you.

While most jailbreak tweaks are somewhat subjective depending on the user, this one seems like a no-brainer for most as it seriously augments the jailbroken handset experience on all fronts. More specifically, it necessitates biometric authentication to manage packages in three of the most popular package management apps, including Cydia, Sileo, and Zebra.

Dapple lets you colorize your iPhone’s Status Bar

One of the most exciting things you can do with a jailbroken handset to help it stand out from the crowd is customize its aesthetics. There are many ways you can do this, from applying themes to installing tweaks that change system colors and more.

One of the latest releases that can help in this department is a jailbreak tweak called Dapple by iOS developer dpkg_, which lets users colorize their iOS device’s Status Bar on a per-item basis.