Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by aklemm | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

aklemm

Remind me what I get for jailbreaking these days? Long ago I wanted to tether, but can’t think of what I need today.

View on HN

For me: system wide speed up of apples obscenely slow animations and access to stored WiFi passwords.

Also theming icons is lots of fun. A fresh coat of paint can make iOS feel exciting and new again.

Wow. I've wanted both of those things so many times! I'm seriously interested now.

I disable the animations in accessibility. Is there a JB app that goes beyond that?

Yes. Reduced motion in accessibility still leaves you with a slow cross fade. With a jailbreak you can disable the animations entirely and apps will open instantly.

This just makes you see the app quicker, but it's still unusable until it loads.

The animations are a clever way to hide loading delay from the enduser.

Not every app needs that much time. Apple has done the equivalent of setting a 30mph speed limit on all roads.

The animation still plays even when the app is loaded and in the background. In that case it really does load instantly.

For me: I just want to be able to downgrade apps, if the app developer decides to break newer versions with "premium" features.

The removal of apps syncing and the removal of apps from iTunes have made this worse in the last few years. I get so frustrated by this often enough.

There’s a paid app called iMazing (look for sales before buying) that allows downloading apps from the App Store to a computer and also installing apps from the IPA files to the device. There may be some other paid apps too for this.

You can enable ECG on Apple Watch in non-approved countries.

I use it so I can have a full development environment natively on device. My iPad turned into a portable SSH or X server. Great for when I’m on the go and can even use my laptop to control it to avoid the bad keyboard and lack of mouse

> X Server

This wouldn't require a jailbreak. There's nothing stopping anyone from making a no-compromises X11 server as a fully-sandboxed iOS App Store app.

> SSH server (i.e. POSIX environment)

There's technically no reason that this should require a jailbreak, either, though an implementation of this that conforms to App Store policies would work a bit differently than people would intuitively expect from e.g. Linux. Rather than going in and installing packages through a package-manager, any additional executable binaries you wanted would have to ship embedded into some code-signed App Store app, (i.e. put Apple's auditors in the path those binaries take to client devices.)

The obvious way to structure it would be to have one "base" app that sets up the skeleton of the POSIX environment and which also acts as a terminal emulator; and then have other apps that are installed to serve as "plugins" for the environment, adding their embedded binaries into the "base" environment (similar to how XCode.app and Server.app integrate their utilities into macOS's $PATH—but in a Shared Container rather than in the host filesystem.)

Compiling things and running them doesn't seem to be restricted completely any more, either, given that Swift Playgrounds exists. (I think it's just custom runtime JITs that are disallowed. Seemingly, if you have a compiler that writes an executable to storage and then fork(2)+exec(2)s it into a new process running under your app, that's fine.)

There's nothing stopping people except the time and effort required. For fontconfig and some other nice to have programs (X itself builds fine) you need to either patch them or modify the SDK you're building against to remove the compiler attributes. Apple won't allow the latter on the app store, and the former would be a significant amount of work.

There are terminal emulators and X servers on the app store now, but the problem is the limitations of the sandbox and performance. Alpine and an X server can be run on Qemu, but performance is far better with the native server.

And, Swift Playgrounds is an Apple product. They don't hold themselves to the same limitations as 3rd party app developers.

There’s already iSH[1] that emulates an x86 Alpine Shell and UTM[2] which provides x86 emulation with a full GUI.

You can either join their Test Flight to install (until Apple takes it down), build and install yourself (good for 90 days and then you have to rebuild), or Jailbreak and install with no hassle.

So, jailbreaking is definitely not necessary, but would be easier due to Apples code signing policies.

[1] https://ish.app/ [2] https://getutm.app/

UTM is not available via TestFlight because it requires entitlements that cannot be used for apps submitted to Apple. UTM also does a lot more than just x86.

> good for 90 days and then you have to rebuild

s/90 days/1 year/ per:

https://getutm.app/install/

> Compiling things and running them doesn't seem to be restricted completely any more, either, given that Swift Playgrounds exists. (I think it's just custom runtime JITs that are disallowed. Seemingly, if you have a compiler that writes an executable to storage and then fork(2)+exec(2)s it into a new process running under your app, that's fine.)

If this is allowed then anybody could blow a hole through the "walled garden" the size of an interstate highway just by providing a compiler that does this, which would allow arbitrary third parties to distribute their apps as source code anybody could compile and run. Somehow I suspect if you actually did this they would shut it down, otherwise why isn't everybody already doing it?

But if you can't then you hardly have anything like a POSIX environment, which is all about creating and running your own scripts and other code.

iOS apps cannot fork. (I have not tried to see if they can exec.)

Swift Playgrounds are not something that a third party could publish to the app store.

You’re missing a major difference between jailbroken X/SSH server and sandboxed:

In jailbroken you don’t need the app open (or even the sreen unlocked) in order to connect to it.

This turned into way, way too big of a comment, but I'm on jailbroken iOS 13.3 right now and love it. It's not like the Old Days where tweaks often added huge new pieces of functionality, and that seems to make many people say jailbreaking is no longer worth it. For me it's more like a bunch of very small usability improvements that add up to make my phone much much more pleasant, polishing its usability to perfection. My favorite iOS 13 tweaks are, in no particular order:

- "powerlogHelperdFix": Listing this first because it's the only workaround I needed for a bug in the jailbreak, to fix the Battery stats Settings pane.

- "AlarmVolume": Custom (read: very loud) volume for my wake-up alarm, separate from the normal volume setting that I like to leave low or muted. Similar to how Android allows separate volume settings for calls / notifs / alarms: https://i.imgur.com/dV4URQT.jpg

- "Mega-Untrusted-Hosts-Blocker IPv4+IPv6": Adblocking hosts file for web content in all apps that works on mobile data or any random Wi-Fi network where you don't have an adblocking DNS server.

- "TwitterNoAds" + "AlwaysLatestTimelineTwitter": Blocking promoted tweets and forcing reverse-chronological feed (as opposed to algorithmically-sorted-feed) in the Twitter app.

- "AlwaysLow": Make my phone willing to always stay in Low Power Mode instead of turning LPM off once charged past 80%: https://i.imgur.com/wgn7Lj9.jpg

- "A-Font", "Noctis Neo", "ColorBadges", "iPadStatusBar13", "Cuboid": System UI customization. No real need; just to keep things fresh by changing up every once in a while. https://i.imgur.com/7Iy0gUs.jpg

Currently: https://i.imgur.com/1lbe3I2.jpg

- "Jellyfish": Customizable replacement for the standard lock screen. https://i.imgur.com/oQSaSl9.jpg

Currently: https://i.imgur.com/kQ0ITWC.jpg

- "Clean Home Screen" + "FDots": Hide tiny UI annoyances like the blue Recently-updated-app dots, the text reminding me that I have to unlock my phone to use it, the text reminding me of what the Notification Center is, etc: https://i.imgur.com/x34If3d.jpg

- "StopPlayin12'": Stops the Apple Music app from auto-playing any time a bluetooth device (like my car) reconnects to my phone. I usually use a third-party music app, but iOS only ever wants to start the built in player. I still have to go manually start the app I want, but at least I get to do it in silence: https://i.imgur.com/90JPuqa.jpg

- "System Sound Disabler": Truly disable excessive UI sound effects so I can leave my volume up and not have to hear them: https://i.imgur.com/nTOrgH1.jpg

- "AskBeforeCalling Too 13": Prevent accidental pocket-dials by adding a confirmation dialog to any action that would initiate a call/text/whatever: https://i.imgur.com/3vw5fkw.jpg

- "NoAutoStraighten", "NoDNDBanner", "NoLowPowerAlert", "NoMoreSuggestions", "NoMoreSkinToneSuggestions", "NoNCHeaderView", "NoYellowBattery", "AppStoreUpdatesTab13", "Ultrasound", etc: Lots of small single-purpose UI tweaks that often don't even need settings panes.

- "NoYTNo" + "Youtube Tools": Automatically dismiss the constant Youtube Premium upsells when you open the app, re-enable background playback support, block ads in Youtube videos, etc.

- "NXBoot": Jailbreak my exploitable Nintendo Switch with any boot code using Apple's USB3 Lightning Camera Adapter: https://i.imgur.com/pySTOVO.jpg

- "RealCC": Reverts the Control Center Wi-Fi/BT toggles to their pre-iOS-11 functionality of fully disabling the associated radios instead of merely disconnecting your WiFi until 3AM the next morning like it does now.

- "DNDMyRecording": Automatically enables Do Not Disturb mode when taking a screen recording so unwanted notifications don't end up in your video.

- "GoodWifi": Display saved passwords for known Wi-Fi networks, display base station MAC, display true signal values, etc: https://i.imgur.com/xSVLhFU.jpg

- "DLEasy": Video downloader for all social media apps, including Reddit-style DASH/HLS segmented videos: https://i.imgur.com/IU1ZFWf.jpg

- "CopyLyrics" + "YTCopyDescription": Allows you to copy the plain text from the lyrics pane in Apple Music or the description of a video in the YouTube app.

- "Keyboard Accio": Makes the 'Globe' button on the keyboard only switch between the first two keyboards in my list of enabled keyboards, so I can leave several enabled without making it a tedious process to get through them all back to QWERTY. The full list is still available via a long press.

- "iKeyWi 4": Total layout customization for the standard keyboard without having to replace it with a third-party keyboard. I keep the layout pretty much the same aside from adding a fifth row of keys up top for a permanent number row: https://i.imgur.com/OQ0ITve.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Nj2UMQ7.jpg

- "Filza" + "Safari Plus": A fully-fledged graphical file manager that makes a great pairing with a tweak that gives Safari a native download manager: https://i.imgur.com/IoWrHKn.jpg

I'm sure most (if not all) of these probably sound unnecessary to many people, but I love feeling in control of my own phone instead of the other way around :)

That's a great list!! I hadn't heard of half these tweaks, nor did I realize there were so many that work on iOS 13. Maybe it's time to jailbreak again!

Give it a shot! A complete restore ("Set up as new iPhone") will remove 100% of any trace of any jailbreak should you decide to go back to stock. Unfortunately restoring an iTunes/iCloud backup can restore files to a non-jailbroken phone that can trigger certain apps' jailbreak detection. I've never had a problem with that, but so I've read.

Thanks for the list. My favorite has to be mikoto by angelxwind. I will have to test it on 13.5.

https://cydia.akemi.ai/?page/net.angelxwind.mikoto

Another great one is Flex 3, which allows you to sort of disassemble functions of installed apps and patch the functionality. It even has a simple community sharing/cloud aspect to find cool patches for a selected installed app.

https://www.reddit.com/r/flextweak/comments/17z57c/mod_what_...

Old repo, but has description:

http://cydia.saurik.com/package/com.johncoates.flex3/

New repo:

http://getdelta.co/

Karen is great, but I've come to dislike and avoid "kitchen-sink" type bundles of tweaks like mikoto. I find it way more straightforward to back up and reinstall a "NoWhateverAnnoyance"-type single-use tweak that needs no settings, and it lets me avoid situations like when I first jailbroke iOS 11 and half of mikoto's features were broken on it.

I understand that. I think mikoto is fully configurable, with sensible defaults, so any feature can be disabled independently of others. Of course, there is something to be said for single purpose tools which I also like. That’s what I like about jailbreaking. It allows people to have a preference. Stock iOS is just not for power users.

Is there an alternate YouTube client like newpipewon Androïd? I block ads everywhere on my iPhone with nextdns but YouTube does its own thing and I get 15–20 seconds of ads before most videos which made me never watch YT videos on my phone.

I'm not aware of an alternative client like on Android, but there are two tweaks that can get you what you want:

- Youtube Tools from this repo: https://jpet26.yourepo.com/pack/youtubetools1

- Cercube from this repo: https://apt.alfhaily.me/depiction/FDXO5R

You will have to manually add either of these repos to your Sources list in Cydia. Try Youtube Tools first since it's free. I use Cercube myself, but I have a grandfathered account from when it was significantly cheaper and that's why I don't recommend it by default any more: https://old.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments/bsd9cy/question_...

Cercube does support downloading videos where Youtube Tools does not, but you can pair YTT with DLEasy to get feature parity for just a couple dollars instead of the full price of Cercube.

You can also download YouTube videos on iOS 13 with Shortcuts.

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/140d11e0f94d4b65a422b253757...

via

https://www.reddit.com/r/shortcuts/comments/9ha09t/comment/e...

Sorry to double post, but I'm past the edit time and should add that not all of these will be on the default handful of repositories that come stock in Cydia on a fresh jailbreak. You might have to search and find the correct repo to add before you can search and find the package to install. Many packages are hosted on large centralized repos like BigBoss or Packix but just as many are hosted on devs' personal repos.

Thanks for a few of these! You should try Choicy, which lets you prevent tweak from loading in certain apps or daemons. Specifically, you can disable tweaks for the daemon "powerloghelperd" (which is what powerlogHelperdFix does) but it also becomes super useful to load certain apps without the substitute engine. It adds a "launch without tweaks" option to the 3D touch menu of each app!

I just switched from android to iphone, and there are a couple things I miss. I wonder if they are possible with a jailbreak:

- one-click open a goo.gl/maps link in google maps (right now I need to click the link, then click open)

- copying text auto-opens a google translate bubble on the side I can use to view the translation (does not appear to be possible on iphone)

- change the default browser that opens from safari to chrome (right now I need to open it in safari, click share, select chrome, then hit "open in chrome". Those 4 clicks could be reduced to 1)

- goo.gl/maps

I don't think I ever encounter those in my world, and always end up in google maps exclusively. I'm not saying you should change your behavior, but I bet the conveniences you look for exist in a different funnel that you might find just as fun.

- copying text auto-opens a google translate bubble

thats kind of cool, there might be an additional keyboard you can install that gets you the same result? But yes to translate I typically just have the google translate app open in the background and quick swap over to it.

I get maps.app.goo.gl shares from friends about where to meet up.

For the translate bubble, maybe there's a shortcut, I don't know. If anyone knows of a way to do this, please let me know.

For any one click look at shortcuts. You can also add web links to the home screen. That is how the ft.com “app” worked for awhile.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208309

> You can also add web links to the home screen

Bookmarks, great, I was wondering how to do that. A bit strange that it needs to visibly flick open the shortcuts app first before proceeding to Chrome..

Speaking of Shortcuts, here’s a bunch to get started.

https://www.reddit.com/r/shortcuts/comments/9ha09t/comment/e...

The default browser (or default app) setting has been rumored to be coming in iOS 14, which is set to have public beta releases starting in July (after WWDC in the end of June).

I don't know if jailbreaking would solve this, but if iPads could have multiple users I'd have bought one by now. Since schools and now businesses have this option it's probably possible.

This is why I stopped buying new iPads. These are usually used by multiple people and there’s no good reason for Apple to withhold multiuser after introducing it to the education market some years ago. With current hardware and memory, it should be easier and quicker than before to switch users.

This actually used to be possible (and may still be?) with the iUsers app in Cydia. That was maybe 10 years ago, though.

I’d jailbreak my iPad Pro immediately if I could get multiuser support. I really hope the multiuser stuff from tvOS 13 or Apple’s implementation for education accounts make it into iPad OS.

Also curious about this. The only thing I can think of emulators and other forbidden apps - you sign them with Xcode, but it only lasts a limited time (a week?)

There’s now a clever tool for getting around Apples signing, AltStore, which uses a server application on your computer to periodically sign the app (and has some trick to bypass not requiring a developer account that involves an Apple Mail extension)

As it turns out, this is used as one of the listed bootstrap methods for getting the jailbreak going.

It's a very different era for jailbreaking, these days. We don't actually need an ACE exploit as a bootstrap any more; we can just rely on various pseudo-officially-sanctioned methods of running arbitrary code (e.g. an XCode development provisioning profile.) A jailbreak is now just a privilege-escalation exploit. Interesting times.

The crazy thing is that it used to be even easier, but Apple broke some of the sideloading mechanisms.

AltStore and its mods seem to be one of the few sideloading methods left for people who aren't paying $99/year for the Apple Developer Program.

Orion tweak from Packix repo restores iOS 12 3d-touch gestures for keyboard (hard-press anywhere to move cursor around, press even harder to select text). This, with RealKeys (adds haptic feedback to the keyboard) are the only tweaks I use, and they are truly a game changer when it comes to typing.

A system-wide parametric equalizer (EQE) that makes music while running inspirational in a way I derive a large amount of value. I’ve also been interested to see all the spyware Apple allows in App Store apps. Very happy to have a bootrom exploit now.

It's so you can treat your phone like that computer it actually is. I don't know about iPhones but on Android for example, I can edit the hosts file.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com