News

10 reasons to jailbreak in 2020

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated July 18, 2020

It’s been a great weekend for the jailbreak community, especially now that two of the most popular jailbreak tools – checkra1n and unc0ver – picked up support for Apple’s latest and greatest iOS/iPadOS 13.5 firmware. But one question we’ve been getting asked often from both new and veteran jailbreakers alike goes something like this: “Why should I jailbreak in 2020?”

In all fairness, it’s a valid question. My own mind goes crazy with endless answers because I’ve been at this for so long, but if you’re new to the community or used to jailbreak in the past and went on hiatus after things seemed to go stale a few years back, then I would totally understand why you might be asking this question right now. In this post, I’ll discuss at least 10 reasons why I think jailbreaking is still relevant even in 2020.

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Hands-on video walkthrough: Taking iPad Pro to the next level with a truly pro setup

Christian Zibreg ∙ May 25, 2020

Apple's iPad Pro is an extremely capable tablet and it can become so much more with various accessories that extend or improve its functionality — I'm referring beyond the usual Magic Keyboard + Apple Pencil combo. In this hands-on video walkthrough, iDownloadBlog's resident videographer Harris Craycraft is exploring some of the ways he's created what he thinks could be a truly pro iPad Pro setup (depending of your definition of a "pro").

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Playing produces a notification when a Now Playing track changes

Anthony Bouchard ∙ May 25, 2020

If you're any bit into music discovery and sometimes find yourself scratching your head about new songs when they begin playing, then we have a somewhat conscious feeling that you’re going to enjoy learning about the likes of a newly released and free jailbreak tweak called Playing by iOS developer HyperDev.

Playing aims to keep you in the loop about Now Playing music as one song ends and another begins by displaying a notification banner with informative details about the new track. By default, the tweak shows you the song’s name and artist, but that can be modified with custom text if it isn’t enough to tickle your fancy.

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Dynamically modify your iPhone’s Home Screen layout with HomePlus Pro

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated September 21, 2021

One of the hallmark things you can do with a jailbroken iPhone is customize the Home Screen’s app icon layout. Not only does it help break the monotony that you deal with when everyone around you uses an iPhone, but it also lets you enjoy custom formats for themes, widgets, and other extensions not mentioned here.

While there have been a lot of Home Screen layout-based jailbreak tweaks in the past, a new release dubbed HomePlus Pro by iOS developer Kritanta seems to provide one of the sleekest user interfaces we’ve seen. Best of all, it’s entirely dynamic, which means you can make edits on the fly directly from the Home Screen without spending much time in the Settings app.

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How the checkra1n and unc0ver jailbreaks compare and contrast

Anthony Bouchard ∙ May 24, 2020

The jailbreak community had quite the field day on Saturday when both the checkra1n and unc0ver jailbreak tools picked up official support for iOS 13.5, permitting jailbreak hopefuls to pwn the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system for iPhones and iPads alike. It’s not often that jailbreak tools support a current signed firmware, and it may come as no surprise that these updates attracted many new users to the jailbreak scene.

One of the most frequent questions we’ve seen over the course of the past 24 hours is “what’s the difference between checkra1n and unc0ver?” Albeit obvious to more seasoned jailbreakers, we wanted to take a moment to discuss the differences and similarities between the two for those who are just entering the jailbreak community's territory for the first time. Without further ado, let’s get started:

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Unc0ver v5.0.1 brings secure unrestricted storage access to jailbreak apps

Anthony Bouchard ∙ May 24, 2020

After successfully releasing unc0ver v5.0.0 Saturday evening with full-fledged support for all devices running iOS/iPadOS 13.5, hacker and unc0ver project lead developer Pwn20wnd has followed up this quiet Sunday evening with a minute update that brings additional improvements to the jailbreak experience.

The update, announced just minutes ago by Pwn20wnd via Twitter, has been dubbed unc0ver v5.0.1 and is now officially available to the masses:

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Editor’s Desk: iOS 13.5 arrives, and so does the unc0ver jailbreak with support for all devices

Christian Zibreg ∙ May 24, 2020

This was an especially bad week for Apple — the new iOS 13.5 update dropped and already jailbreakers have the ability to liberate the latest software on Apple’s newest handsets. It's been also discovered that not only has iOS 14 leaked out from Apple's supply chain, but has been distributed and sold on social media as well. So much about doubling-down on secrecy!

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Enjoy an improved iOS notification banner experience with Dayn

Anthony Bouchard ∙ May 24, 2020

I’ll be the first to say that I love how notification banners look on the iPhone in a post-iOS 13 era, but I also think there’s room for improvement in both the aesthetics and the functional implementation to make the user experience a bit better from anywhere in the operating system.

While perusing the New tab in my package manager over the weekend, I happened upon a new jailbreak tweak release dubbed Dayn by iOS developers Devvix and JannikCrack, which appears to offer some serious upgrades to the native notification system found in iOS 13. Curious as I was to better understand how it worked, I decided to give it a try.

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Zebra v1.1.9 released to fix frustrating error message on latest unc0ver

Anthony Bouchard ∙ May 24, 2020

If you excitedly jailbroke iOS 13.5 yesterday using the new unc0ver v5.0.0 jailbreak and then went to install the Zebra package manager as an alternative to the preinstalled Cydia package manager, then you probably found yourself plagued with error messages claiming “Operation Not Permitted” before your very eyes.

Evidently, you weren’t alone if you experienced this issue. Many Zebra users reported this problem after jailbreaking with the new unc0ver on Saturday, and now Zebra has been updated to version 1.1.9 with an official fix so that users can use the package manager error-free on their newly pwned handsets.

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