After a much-anticipated wait, hacker Pwn20wnd has incorporated full-fledged A12(X) device support into the unc0ver jailbreak tool and released it for public testing in the form of unc0ver v3.7.0 beta 1.
The new beta was made available for public testing Sunday afternoon following a series of suspenseful Tweets shared by Pwn20wnd himself along with some of his internal beta testers:
It was only a few days ago that Pwn20wnd teased that significant progress had been made on adding full A12(X) device support to the unc0ver jailbreak tool, and as it would seem, we’re now closer than ever to a public release.
Pwn20wnd took to Twitter this afternoon to share that unc0ver with A12(X) device support had entered the internal testing phases, and assuming everything goes smoothly with this phase of testing, the first official public release could follow shortly after:
Those heavily invested in the jailbreak community will be happy to hear that Pwn20wnd teased significant progress on the much-awaited A12(X) jailbreak with Cydia support Tuesday afternoon. The hacker shared a series of Tweets about all the work that went into making the jailbreak experience on unc0ver as good as humanly possible.
According to Pwn20wnd, Cydia support on A12(X) will be PAC-less, which means it won’t use traditional kernel patches for total handset liberation as current jailbreak solutions do. What’s more is the implementation has been totally rewritten from scratch in an effort to address performance and stability:
If you’re currently taking advantage of Pwn20wnd’s unc0ver jailbreak tool on iOS 11 or 12, then we have some wonderful news for you! Unc0ver v3.6.0 is now available to download, and according to Pwn20wnd, this is the biggest stability and reliability update ever released for this particular jailbreak tool.
Pwn20wnd announced the update just a few minutes ago via Twitter while linking to the brand-new unc0ver.dev webpage where future iterations of the jailbreak tool will be hosted from now on:
If you’re on iOS 12, then there are two primary jailbreaks you can choose from: Chimera by the Electra Team or unc0ver by Pwn20wnd. Both jailbreaks are neck-and-neck with device and software compatibility, but since iOS 12.4 first became jailbroken, both parties have been hard at work to implement support for A12(X) devices.
The unc0ver jailbreak only “partially” supports A12(X) devices at the time of this writing, and full support is coming sometime in the near future, including those running iOS 12.4. Chimera, on the other hand, has lacked A12(X) support on iOS 12.1.3-12.3 (beta) and 12.4 since v1.3.0 first launched, and still lacks it to this day.
Pwn20wnd updated the unc0ver jailbreak Saturday afternoon, officially bringing it up to version 3.5.6 with increased support for A12(X) devices running iOS 12.1.3-12.4.
As you might recall, Pwn20wnd released unc0ver v3.5.5 earlier this week with SSH support on the aforementioned device and firmware combinations, but citing a Tweet shared just this afternoon, the latest unc0ver update adds support for remounting and restoring the RootFS on those same devices:
Pwn20wnd has been hard at work over the last several days adding support for iOS 12.4 to the unc0ver jailbreak, and several updates later, it’s now more reliable on iOS 12.4 than it was at the time of the initial release; but one thing was missing since the start: A12(X) support.
Pwn20wnd addressed this concern Monday afternoon by releasing unc0ver v3.5.3, which brings ‘partial’ support for A12(X) devices running iOS 12.1.3-12.4. This should sound familiar to most since unc0ver already ‘partially’ supported A12(X) devices on earlier firmware versions.
Springtomize is a name that veteran jailbreak enthusiasts should be firmly familiar with. Not only is Springtomize one of the most popular all-in-one tweaks ever conceived in the history of the community, but it’s still being maintained to this very day.
iOS developer Janosch Hübner (sharedRoutine) released an updated version of Springtomize 4 in the Packix repository on Friday with full support for iOS 11.0-12.1.2, and as you might come to expect, this update incorporates support for A12(X) handsets.
The Electra Team officially released its Chimera jailbreak for iOS 12.0-12.1.2 on Monday and became the first jailbreak team to release a full-fledged jailbreak supporting A12(X) devices. But as you might come to expect, an initial release is almost always followed with updates to help iron out the kinks.
The Electra Team pushed two consecutive updates for the Chimera jailbreak overnight, dubbed versions 1.0.1 and 1.0.2 respectively. Electra Team member nullpixel announced the first update, and the Electra Team announced the second via Twitter:
Well-known jailbreak tweak developer Ryan Petrich made an elusive appearance in Cydia over the weekend as he updated a plethora of vital dependencies with preliminary support for arm64e devices.
Petrich maintains some of the jailbreak community’s highest-profile dependencies, including Activator, AppList, PreferenceLoader, and RocketBoostrap, among others. Many of these were included in this past weekend’s update burst.
Just last week, Saurik advised the jailbreak community not to hold its breath for an A12(X)-compatible Cydia Substrate, but that doesn’t mean that team unc0ver won’t release a full A12(X)-compatible jailbreak; in fact, the contrary appears to be true.
In the absence of Cydia Substrate on A12(X) platforms and with little or no indication that it’ll ever be updated to support them, hacker and unc0ver lead developer Pwn20wnd embarked on a new challenge – one that involves implementing an improved Substitute for A12(X) handsets specifically while continuing to use Cydia Substrate for tweak injection on pre-A12(X) devices.
Hacker and unc0ver lead developer Pwn20wnd shared some reassuring comments with the jailbreak community via Twitter Thursday afternoon, elucidating that Cydia as a package manager wasn’t dead and that third-party developers besides Saurik (such as team unc0ver’s Sam Bingner) can still maintain it.
If you didn’t already know, the Cydia package manager is open source, which means that anyone can view its source code and update the software so long as they adhere to the license: