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.

Hacker demos untethered jailbreak running on iPhone 5 with iOS 10.2.1

The jailbreak community has been anything but quiet lately. We’ve seen things ranging from jailbreaking the new flagship iPhone XS Max, to updating untethered bootrom exploits for the legacy iPhone 3GS, to releasing a new jailbreak tool for firmware 1.1 on the original iPod touch; and now, something else of interest has surfaced.

In a curious video shared by YouTube user doras2 over the weekend, we discern what appears to be a fully-untethered jailbreak running on a 32-bit iPhone 5 handset with iOS 10.2.1 installed on it:

Add transparency and zoom features to Google Maps for iOS with GMEnhancer

Despite how Apple Maps has matured over the years, Google Maps continues to be one of the most popular navigation solutions on the iOS platform. Google Maps is reliable, easy to use, and encompasses a bevy of conveniences that Apple Maps doesn’t; but one thing it lacks customization.

Here to fix that dilemma is a new free jailbreak tweak called GMEnhancer by iOS developer b01s. This tweak provides users with several ways to modify the stock look and feel of the Google Maps app on pwned iOS handsets.

FastDeleteX skips the “Recently Deleted” album when deleting pictures from iOS

One of my pet peeves concerning photo deletion on iOS is that everything you delete gets sent to the “Recently Deleted” album in the Photos app rather than being permanently deleted. The result is that you end up deleting everything for a second time to remove it from your device.

Albeit a safety measure in case you change your mind or delete something by accident, this feature creates more work than some people want to deal with. Fortunately, a new free jailbreak tweak called FastDeleteX by iOS developer Mohammad Ghzayel solves this problem for anyone who feels the same way I do.

Cross-platform SHSH blob-saving tool blobsaver updated to version 2.2 with improvements

Good practice for any jailbreaker is to save your handset’s SHSH blobs regularly. Doing so opens you up to the possibility of firmware downgrades and other fruitful benefits concerning jailbreaking.

A whole host of SHSH blob-saving tools exist today, including blobsaver. The latter is a cross-platform GUI app that promises ease of use across common operating systems like macOS, Windows, and even Linux.

Luca Todesco has jailbroken the iPhone XS Max

iPhone XS jailbreak

Renowned security researcher Luca Todesco (@qwertyoruiop) is best known for his iOS 10-centric Yalu jailbreak tool. But Todesco flexed his hacking muscles once again over the weekend upon confirming how he successfully jailbroke Apple’s flagship iPhone XS Max.

The confirmation comes by way of a set of Tweets shared on the Twitter social media platform, which indicate that while Todesco has finished “hacking the XS Max,” he’s since returned to a stock installation of iOS.

PremiumPlay, SnowBoard, and other jailbreak tweaks to check out this weekend…

Jailbreak Tweaks to check out

Unsurprisingly, there’s been a slight lull in jailbreak tweak development following the launch of iOS 12, but that hasn’t kept some developers from moving forward with captivating new releases.

In this roundup, we’ll talk about all the jailbreak tweaks released from Monday, October 1st to Sunday, October 7th. As usual, we’ll kick things off by discussing our favorite releases in detail and then outline the rest afterward.

Axi0mX announces an update to his Alloc8 untethered bootrom exploit for iPhone 3GS

In April of last year, iOS hacker axi0mX came forward with the alloc8 untethered bootrom exploit for all models of the tried and true iPhone 3GS. But as of this weekend, he announced an update for the exploit that brings improvements to stability and usability.

As per one of the axi0mX’s most recent Tweets, the updated exploit does away with a bothersome three-second delay that typically transpires when waking the device from sleep:

Customize your iPhone’s battery indicator with SmoothBattery

Out all the different indicators that appear in your iPhone’s Status Bar, the battery indicator is one of the most pertinent. But while it’s great at its job of displaying how much battery life you have left, it doesn’t have much to speak for in terms of user customization.

A new free jailbreak tweak dubbed SmoothBattery by iOS developer CydiaGeek changes that by providing iOS device users with a host of new battery indicator-centric configuration options.

iPhone 1337 Team releases jailbreak tool for firmware 1.1 on the original iPod touch

It’s been more than 11 years since Apple first released the iPod touch with firmware 1.1, but a team of jailbreak developers calling themselves the “iPhone 1337 Team” on /r/jailbreak have allegedly produced a working jailbreak for it.

More than a decade later, most people are using at least iOS 10 or later, so the circumstances surrounding this news are about as niche as it gets. Nevertheless, we felt it was worth a mention, considering how much we respect jailbreaking here at iDB.