How to

Jailbreak iPhone 3.1.3 with PwnageTool

Sébastien Page ∙ February 7, 2010

The Dev Team released PwnageTool 3.1.5 just a few hours ago. In this guide and tutorial, I will show you how to use PwnageTool to jailbreak iPhone 3.1.3.

Before we get into the details, please make sure you read this article by the Dev Team. It will explain to you what you can and cannot do. It is a very important piece of information that you should not overlook.

If at any point in time you updated your iPhone to firmware 3.1.3, then you also updated your baseband to 05.12.01. If that's the case, you will be able to jailbreak by downgrading to 3.1.2 first, but you will not be able to unlock.

PwnageTool will jailbreak the following 3.1.3 devices:

iPhone 2G iPhone 3G iPhone 3GS (old bootrom) iPod Touch 1G iPod Touch 2G (old bootrom)

If you don't care about unlocking, RedSn0w is still an easier and quicker way to jailbreak.

Note that this tutorial to jailbreak iPhone 3.1.3 with PwnageTool is for Mac and Mac only. There is no Windows version of PwnageTool and they will most likely never be. If you don't have a Mac, ask around and see if a friend of yours can help you out and create a custom firmware for.

Again, please make sure you read the information given by the Dev Team. It will answer most questions you may have.

How to Jailbreak iPhone 3.1.3 with PwnageTool

Step 1: Make sure you have the latest version of iTunes installed on your computer. If not, download and install it, then reboot your computer. Now make sure you backup your iPhone by syncing with iTunes, just in case something goes wrong.

Step 2: Download PwnageTool 3.1.5 and your iPhone firmware from our downloads page. Save these 2 files to your desktop.

Step 3: Launch PwnageTool. It should give you a warning message. Click OK.

Step 4: Select “Expert Mode”.

Step 5: Select your device then click the blue arrow to continue.

Step 6: If PwnageTool doesn’t automatically find the correct IPSW file, click “Browse for IPSW” and locate it (it should be on your desktop).

Step 7: You will now have several options. Choose “General” and click the blue arrow to continue.

Step 8: Under “General Settings”, you have the option to activate the phone or not. This is a very important step so please read carefully.

If you have a contract with an official carrier (such as AT&T in the US, or Orange in France, etc…), do not activate.

If you do not have a contract with an official carrier (ie. you want to unlock for another carrier), you have to activate. Then you will have to install UltraSn0w or BlackSn0w from Cydia in order to fully unlock the phone.

You will know you didn’t choose the right option if you don’t have signal after jailbreaking.

You don’t have to, but I suggest increasing the root partition size to somewhere around 700MB, just to be on the safe side. When you’re done, click the blue arrow to continue.

Step 9: You are now taken to the “Bootneuter settings”. All of them should be greyed out. Click the blue arrow to continue.

Step 10: You are now taken to the “Cydia settings”. From here, you may download packages so you don’t have to manually do it later. For example, you may download WinterBoard, which would be installed during the pwnage process. Let’s keep things simple and skip this step which is not necessary. Click the blue arrow to continue.

Step 10: You are now taken to the “Custom packages settings”. Make sure "Cydia" is selected.

Step 11: You are now taken to the”Custom logos settings”. You can choose to add the default logos (see below) or you can add your own logos. If you choose to add your own, make sure the images are not larger than 320 x 480.

Step 12: We’re almost done! You now have to build the custom IPSW. Click “Build” and click the blue arrow to continue.

Step 13: Save your custom IPSW to your desktop.

Step 14: PwnageTool will now start building your custom IPSW. Be patient… It can take up to 15 minutes.

Step 15: PwnageTool will ask you if your iPhone has been pwned before. If you’re not sure, just click NO.

Step 16: If your iPhone was previously jailbroken, you can skip to step 19. If your iPhone wasn’t already jailbroken, follow the following directions. If your iPhone isn’t plugged to your computer yet, plug it. Don’t open iTunes. If iTunes launches automatically, close it. PwnageTool will now deliver the payload.

Step 17: After successfully delivering the payload, PwnageTool will put your iPhone in recovery mode. Click OK.

Step 18: iTunes should pop up saying it has detected an iPhone in recovery mode and that you must restore. Click OK.

Step 19: We are going to restore your iPhone using the custom IPSW you built. In iTunes, hold the “Alt/Option” key and click “Restore” at the same time. DO NOT click “Restore” without holding the “Alt/Option” key! A dialog box will pop up and you’ll be able to choose the custom IPSW file you created that was saved to your desktop.

Step 20: Navigate to the “jailbreak” folder and select the custom IPSW we created.

Step 21: iTunes will now restore your iPhone using the custom firmware which could take a while, so relax. When done, your iPhone will reboot and you will now have a jailbroken iPhone.

That's it! Your iPhone 3.1.3 should be fully jailbroken, thanks to the good work of the Dev Team and PwnageTool.

In the future, make sure you do not update your iPhone firmware when there is a new one coming out. It will avoid many issues. Besides, these updates are very minor and useless. For what it's worth, I'm still on iPhone OS 3.0, and happy to be.

If you have any question or comment, please leave a comment.

Jailbreak iPhone 3.1.2 with RedSn0w 0.9

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 31, 2010

This guide and tutorial will show you how to jailbreak your iPhone 2G, 3G or 3GS running OS 3.1.2 using RedSn0w 0.9.

If you are new to the whole jailbreaking thing, I really suggest you read this information about RedSn0w 0.9. It will tell you everything you need to know about RedSn0w before starting.

I know that some of you won't bother reading the more info link about RedSn0w 0.9 so here is probably the most important information about this jailbreak:

If you have a late-model iPhone 3GS, or if you have an iPod touch 2G whose serial number begins with “MC”, you can use redsn0w to jailbreak but you are currently restricted to “tethered” rebooting. That means you need to connect your device to a computer to complete the boot after a reset. Also, these devices cannot have custom logos.

redsn0w will ask you whether or not you fit in this category when used with the iPhone 3GS or iPod touch 2G. If you have a late-model device and don't give redsn0w the correct answer, you will likely need to do a system restore to recover from the mistake.

To do a tethered boot after your late-model device resets for some reason, either run redsn0w again and select “Just boot tethered right now”, or run blackra1n.

This RedSn0w tutorial was written for Windows but I assume the steps are identical for a Mac.

Step 1: Download RedSn0w 0.9 for Mac or PC as well as the correct 3.1.2 firmware for your iPhone from here. To make things easy, save those 2 files on your desktop.

Step 2: Make sure you have the latest version of iTunes installed on your computer, then restore your iPhone to the latest firmware 3.1.2. Restoring is the preferred way to go about it as simply updating could cause issues later on.

Step 3: Launch RedSn0w and browse for the 3.1.2 firmware you downloaded to your computer in Step 1.

Step 4: RedSn0w will automatically check if you chose the right firmware (IPSW). It will then patch the file.

Step 5: For iPhone 2G only (other please skip to step 6)! You will then be offered several options. If you have an iPhone 2G and you want to unlock, now select "Install Cydia" and "Unlock". You will have to download the bootloaders 3.9 and 4.6 from here. If you just want to jailbreak, disregard this and go to step 6.

Step 6: You will now have the option to "Install Cydia" as well as "Custom boot logo" and "Custom recovery logo". For the purpose of this tutorial, I suggest you only choose "Install Cydia".

Step 7: Make sure your iPhone is plugged to your computer. RedSn0w will now dictate you a few steps to have your iPhone enter DFU mode. Follow the onscreen instructions very carefully.

Step 8: Your iPhone will reboot when successfully jailbroken.

Congratulations! You just jailbroke your iPhone using RedSn0w 0.9. If you want to unlock your iPhone 3G or 3GS, simply install UltraSn0w from Cydia.

Any question or concern, please feel free to ask in the comment section below. Happy jailbreak :)

UPDATE: People have encountered quite a bit of problems when running RedSn0w o.9 beta 3 with an iPhone 3GS. Thankfully MuscleNerd has been updating RedSn0w and the 3GS issues should now be gone. You can download the latest RedSn0w from our iPhone downloads page.

How to Use Multiple Exchange Accounts on Your iPhone

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated October 10, 2018

If you have a Microsoft Exchange account set up on your iPhone, you know how useful it is. MS Exchange has become more popular on the iPhone lately since Google implemented Google Sync for iPhone, which allows you to sync your email, contacts and calendars over the air. Exchange is also very popular among enterprise users.

One downside of Microsoft Exchange for iPhone is that you cannot have multiple Exchange accounts on one iPhone. This just changed thanks to some smart users of the ModMyi forum and an iPhone dev.

I was in the process of writing a long tutorial on how to set up multiple Exchange accounts on your iPhone when I found out thanks to JAiB that there is now an application in Cydia that does the hard work for you. If you want to add an exchange account the hard way, then read these instructions on LifeHacker. If you want to go the easy way, read on...

There is now a simple way to add a second Exchange account to your iPhone. It's an app available in Cydia called AddExchange. Launch Cydia, look for AddExchange and install it.

After installing AddExchange, you launch the app from its springboard icon. From there, you simply tap a “+” button, and that’s it! AddExchange creates a new Exchange account behind the scenes, and names it SRV2. All you have to do at this point is open up its settings and change the defaults to whatever your second Exchange server uses. For me, I just changed it to use Google’s sync settings.

Looks simple enough. The downside? You have to be jailbroken but I guess if you're reading this blog, that shouldn't be much of an issue for you...

If you've tried AddExchange, I would love to hear your thoughts about it. Does it perform as well as it is supposed to? Have you found any caveat yet?

How to Sync Firefox Bookmarks With Your iPhone

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated May 11, 2018

Have you ever tried to sync your Firefox bookmarks with your iPhone? If so, you must have been very frustrated as it is not easy as it may sound. For some reason, Apple didn't deem it necessary to add Firefox to the short list of browsers from which you can sync bookmarks to your iPhone.

Good news is there is a hack for that, using an extension called Xmarks. Bad news is it's for Windows only (you will need IE) and it's not very straightforward.

I could write a tutorial on how to sync your bookmarks from Firefox to iPhone's Safari but Shawn0 has got it covered on his blog, so it would be a waste of time.

Check out Shawn0's tutorial for detailed instructions.

Isn't that a neat little trick?

How to Set Any Song On Your iPhone As A Ringtone

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 23, 2016

AnyRing is a jailbreak application available in Cydia that lets you use any song on your iPhone as a custom ringtone or SMS ring.

There are several ways to add ringtones to your iPhone for free. Audiko is one of my favorite but it seems it's going to get some fierce competition from a new app called AnyRing.

With AnyRing (3.2) you can easily select any song on your iPhone (or Record you own voice) to play as a Ringtone or SMS Ring. AnyRing even lets you select the starting/ending point in the song to play when the Ringtone is played. Does not require any audio conversion of any type!

Here are some of the features:

Select any song on your device to act as a Ringtone. No Audio/File conversion needed. Select start and ending point in song to play as Ringtone. Easy to use interface.

AnyRing is available from the Cydia Store. It comes with a 10-day trial so you may want to try it out first, and if you like it, you can choose to pay the $3.99.

I think it's worth the price. What do you think?

How to Create Custom Text Message Ringtones On Your iPhone

Sébastien Page ∙ December 19, 2009

Have you ever wanted to create your own custom text message ringtone for your iPhone? I know I have! Today I found a great tutorial that explains exactly how to do it.

Go to this article on iClarified and check it out. I haven't tried it myself since I'm traveling and don't really have time to "experiment" but I am hoping that some of you will try it and share some feedback.

Let us know by leaving a comment below.

10 Tips Every iPhone User Should Know

Sébastien Page ∙ November 19, 2009

Every once in a while I get asked about how to do something dead simple on the iPhone, such as moving icons around. To most of us, this is very basic stuff, but not everyone knows everything about the iPhone, which is why I decided to write a post with 10 tips and tricks.

Shake to Undo

When you are writing an email or a note, you can shake your iPhone to undo what you just wrote. If you just deleted some text from the note or the email, you can also shake to undo and it will bring back the text you accidentally deleted. Note that this feature works for every application that allows you to input text (ie SMS, Tweetie, etc...)

Quickly Silence or Send Incoming Call to Voicemail

If you are receiving a phone call you don't want to answer, you can press the power button or any volume buttons once to mute the ringing. Now if you want to send the person calling you directly to voicemail, simply press the power button twice.

Zooming on Images in Safari

To quickly zoom on an image in the Safari web browser, simply double tap on the image.

Zooming on Text in Safari

Just like you can zoom on images, you can zoom on text in Safari by double tapping it. If you are on a website with multiple columns (such as the New York Times website), it will zoom in the column, making it easy for you to read what's in it.

Save or Copy an Image

You can easily save images from virtually any application (ie Safari, Mail, Twitter app, etc...) by holding your finger on the image and selecting "Save Image" or "Copy". If you select to save the image, it will be saved in your camera roll.

Quickly Go Back to the Top of A Page

In any application, if you are scrolling down (ie scrolling down a web page in Safari) and you quickly want to go back to the top of the page, you don't have to scoll up. Simply tap the status bar (this is where the time is displayed) and it will take you all the way up the page.

Preview Links

When browsing a web page for example, you may see a link to another page. If you are curious to see where this links may take you without having to open it, simply put and hold your finger on it. It will show you the destination of the link, also giving you the opportunity to open it, open it in a new page or even copy the link.

Save Time Typing Domain Names

When you are in Safari and you want to go to another web page, you don't have to type the full URL. For example, if you want to go to https://www.idownloadblog.com from Safari, just type iphonedownloadblog and the "www." and ".com" will be added automatically.

Take a Screenshot

You can take a screenshot of any screen on your iPhone by simply holding the Power and Home button together. You will see your screen flashing and making the camera noise. The photo will be saved in your camera roll.

Add Your Favorite Websites to Your Springboard

If you have favorite sites that you visit all the time, it might be a good idea to add them to your springboard (the main screen where all the apps are). To do this, simply go to the webpage you want to add to your springboard, tap "+" at the bottom, and choose "Add to Home Screen". This will create an icon on your home screen and you'll be able to access this page quickly, without having to open Safari first.

Do you have more tips? Please share them in the comments.

How to Share Your iPhone Pictures in Full Resolution

Sébastien Page ∙ November 13, 2009

There are 2 ways to share your iPhone pictures via email or MMS but one is better than the other because it does not compress the images and keep them in their original size and resolution.

Method 1: The first way is to simply go to the photo application and type "share". This will ask you if you want to share via email or MMS. Whatever you decide, it will compress the picture to 800x600, reducing the quality of the image.

Method 2: The better way to do it if you want to preserve the quality of your images is to "copy" (not "share") the image, then manually launch the mail or MMS app, and paste the image into it. This way, your images will not be automatically resized and should be 1600x1200.

By using the second method, your MMS or email will take longer to be sent out, but at least it will be a full quality image.

If you have other simple tips like this, feel free to let me know.

How to Fix Wifi Connection Issues After Unlocking Your iPhone With BlackSn0w

Sébastien Page ∙ November 6, 2009

Many people are experiencing various issues after unlocking their iPhone with BlackRa1n and BlackSn0w.

Here are some of the problems you may have encountered:

No 3G or Edge Can't connect to wifi Problems with YouTube No push notifications

There are 2 possible solutions for this.

The first fix is to reset your network settings. On your iPhone, go to Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings. After resetting your settings, make sure to reboot your iPhone. It is very important to reboot or else, the changes won't take effect.

A few people told me on Twitter that this didn't work but resetting ALL the settings then rebooting did work. So try this if the first fix didn't work.

The second fix is pretty simple too but it does require you to have an Internet connection. From your iPhone, go to Cydia and add this new source http://cydia.iphoneil.net.

After adding this source, search for an app called Push Fix and install it. Reboot your iPhone and you should be good to go.

If the problems persist, I suggest taking more drastic measures by restoring your iPhone. I know, I know, restoring is not fun but it's always a good thing to do when nothing else works.

If you choose to restore your iPhone, make sure you set it up as a new phone. Do not "restore from backup" as this would bring back some of the bad settings that caused your issues in the first place.

If you tried all of these fixes and you're still experiencing issues, then I'm not sure what else to tell you.

If you found another fix, please feel free to leave a comment below.

How to Tether Your iPhone 3.1.2

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated November 12, 2019

With the release of BlackSn0w, it is now possible to tether your iPhone running OS 3.1.2.

For those of you who don't know what tethering is, it basically allows you to use your iPhone as a modem in order to share the internet connection with a computer. For example, this post was written on my laptop while tethering my iPhone in Los Angeles airport.

UPDATE: This post is outdated. For the latest information about tethering your iPhone, please visit this page.

Step 1: Unlock your iPhone using BlackSn0w. See my BlackSn0w tutorial.

Step 2: From your iPhone, navigate to help.benm.at, hit tethering, choose your country and carrier, hit download, then hit Install.

Step 3: Reboot your iPhone.

Step 4: Go to Settings > General > Network > Internet Tethering and turn it on.

You're done!

You should now be able to tether your iPhone, either via bluetooth or USB.

Pretty simple, isn't it?

How to Change Your iPhone Root Password

Sébastien Page ∙ November 4, 2009

You may have heard the story a few days ago of a hacker who took a few iPhone owners hostages andpretty much blackmailed them into paying a fee.

For those of you who don't know the story, here is a quick summary, courtesy of Gizmodo.

Apparently all that it took to terrify many Dutch iPhone users was a "trivial" port scanning technique and "a modicum of networking know-how." After the hacker gained access to the jailbroken phones with unchanged root passwords and SSH enabled, he sent the pictured message which led to a demand for a €5 PayPal payment and words of caution:

If you don't pay, it's fine by me, but remember, the way I got access to your iPhone can be used by thousands of others-they can send text messages from your number (like I did), use it to call or record your calls, and actually whatever they want, even use it for their hacking activities! I can assure you, I have no intention of harming you or whatever, but, some hackers do! It's just my advice to secure your phone.

How to prevent any hacker to hijack your iPhone? Simply change the root password!

How to change your iPhone root password:

Step 1: If you haven't installed MobileTerminal yet, go to Cydia and look for "MobileTerminal" and install the app, then reboot your iPhone.

Step 2: Lanch MobileTerminal and type su and hit return.

Step 3: You will be asked to enter your current password. Your default password is alpine so, type alpine and hit return.

Step 4: You are now inside your iPhone. We are now going to change the root password. Type passwd and hit return. Make sure you type passwd correctly.

Step 5: You will be aske to enter a new password. Type whatever you want for your new password and hit return.

Step 6: You will be asked to enter your new password again. Do that and hit return.

That's it. You have successfully changed your iPhone root password. Make sure you don't forget it!

Tutorial: Unlock iPhone 3.1.2 with BlackSn0w

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated August 31, 2010

It's official, BlackSn0w is out and available for download. BlackSn0w is not a standalone app. BlackSn0w is part of Blackra1n RC3.

People who accidentally locked their iPhone on baseband 05.11.07 will now be able to unlock their iPhone using BlackSn0w.

This step by step guide and tutorial will show you how to unlock your iPhone OS 3.1.2 baseband 05.11.07 with BlackSn0w.

If you just want to jailbreak your iPhone and are not interested in unlocking, refer to my BlackRa1n RC3 tutorial.

This BlackSn0w iPhone unlock tutorial will work on both Mac and PC.

In this tutorial, I will assume that your iPhone is currently not jailbroken or unlocked.