Why Do iPhone Owners Jailbreak Their Devices?
Most iPhone users jailbreak their devices to enhance and customize the system interface with various tweaks. But beyond that, jailbreaking allows you to install many useful apps that are not and never will be available in the official App Store. Today, we’ll look at the most interesting ones.
In our previous article, we discussed how you can download numerous tweaks for a jailbroken iPhone to change hidden iOS settings and add all sorts of visual enhancements. However, as Quasimodo once said, beauty alone is not enough for complete happiness.
The Cydia package manager gives you access to a huge assortment of apps from independent developers that you definitely won’t find in the App Store. That’s mainly because most of them use jailbreak capabilities—these features simply don’t exist on a regular iPhone or iPad. Today, we’ll review some of the most interesting and useful programs for jailbroken Apple mobile devices, which will work on iPhones with iOS 12.5.5 and newer.
What Is Cydia?
Cydia is a .deb package manager that lets you install programs from third-party repositories on jailbroken iPhones and iPads. When you jailbreak your device using most standard methods, this app is installed automatically. For instructions on how to jailbreak your iPhone and install Cydia, check out our guide:
- How to Jailbreak iOS 12: Step-by-Step Instructions
- Checkm8 Exploit: How It Works and How to Use It
Filza
Every computer user—whether on Apple or any other platform—knows that the most important program in their operating system is the file manager. iOS doesn’t have a true file manager because users don’t have full access to the file system: the default Files app only shows the contents of a few folders on the device, iCloud Drive, and other cloud storage. Is that a real file management tool? That’s a rhetorical question.
Filza, which you can install from Cydia on a jailbroken iPhone, gives you full access to all folders and files on your device, including system files. With Filza, you can perform all standard file operations, including moving, renaming, deleting, and copying using the clipboard. The app also offers a wide range of settings: you can change the appearance (display files and folders in Windows, macOS, or Linux style) and fine-tune the interface.
The app costs $5.99 and is paid via PayPal, but all the main file management features are available with a trial license. Filza lets you explore the deepest corners of your iPhone. So if you ever want to clean up your phone or send \boot\ to \dev\null, Filza will help you do it.
iCleaner
Speaking of cleaning up junk: Windows users are familiar with CCleaner—a utility that can delete temporary and unnecessary files, clear cache, and more. The equivalent for jailbroken iOS is iCleaner.
iCleaner is designed to remove junk from iOS and delete unnecessary files, which you can select by category: message attachments, Safari cache, system updates, logs, temporary files, battery statistics, and more. In a separate settings window, you can specify apps whose data should not be deleted. The app is also paid (€4.99), but works well in free mode, though it does show ads.
MTerminal
If you’re a true hacker, you can’t do without a terminal. And on a jailbroken iPhone, you can use this tool if you want!
I tried several terminal emulators available in Cydia—only MTerminal worked on my phone. It’s a fork of the well-known Mobile Terminal (which, by the way, refused to work). The terminal runs as the mobile user and lets you execute basic console commands. There are no settings in this utility, but it’s still usable. The only downside is the small font.
iWep Pro
This app is designed for Wi-Fi password cracking and testing wireless network vulnerabilities. It uses known vulnerabilities in WEP and WPA protocols, as well as in popular router firmware, to try to find the password for a wireless network. The router type is detected automatically: just launch the app, select a Wi-Fi network from the list (Wi-Fi must be enabled on your iPhone), and tap the “i” icon next to the desired SSID.
If no vulnerabilities are found for the network, the Password Exploit section at the bottom of the screen will say “Not Supported.” Otherwise, you can try to crack the password by tapping “Press to start.” For my own Wi-Fi, the app found no vulnerabilities, nor for my neighbors’, but it did discover two hidden networks nearby that I didn’t even know existed.
SnapBack
Every Windows user knows how System Restore works. The tool creates so-called restore points, and you can roll Windows back to the state it was in when the point was created. SnapBack does something similar on the iPhone. Since it needs direct access to Apple’s APFS file system, you can’t use it without a jailbreak.
Jailbreaking allows SnapBack to create “snapshots” of your iOS state as the root superuser. On first launch, the app automatically saves a snapshot called orig-fs—this is the original snapshot made by the OS itself, either right before the first jailbreak or after the last update. You can create additional restore points manually and name them whatever you like. If needed, you can restore your iPhone to its original state by selecting the desired snapshot—very useful if you installed something from Cydia that broke your system.
AirShou
AirShou Screen Recorder is an app for recording your iOS screen. You can record in both portrait and landscape orientation, choosing the desired video quality: 480p, 640p, 720p, or 1080p. The app records stereo sound and saves the final file in MP4 format.
You can use the recordings to create tutorials or demonstrate gameplay, for example. Technically, AirShou doesn’t require a jailbreak, but it’s available in Cydia and can be installed from there, bypassing the App Store.
iTransmission
iTransmission is one of the most popular torrent clients for iPhone and iPad. If you’ve always wanted to turn your iPhone into a torrent downloader and watch pirated movies from RuTracker, iTransmission is what you need.
The app supports iOS versions 10–14 and includes almost all the features of a regular torrent client. To start downloading a torrent, just enter the URL of a .torrent file or a Magnet link. You can also use the built-in browser to find the link directly. In the settings, you can set the port, download and upload speed, choose the maximum number of connections, and resume paused or interrupted downloads.
The iTransmission window displays information about torrent files, including their size, number of peers, download speed, and number of available pieces. You can also view the contents of torrents and edit the tracker list. The app lets you open torrent links directly from Safari, and downloaded files are saved to a selected folder, whose contents you can view with Filza, for example.
Flex 3
This app is designed for creating your own tweaks on jailbroken iPhones. The app is paid, but version 3, available as a public beta, can be downloaded for free from Cydia by anyone.
Flex 3 lets you select apps on your phone—both standard iOS apps (including Settings) and those installed later—and create patches with tweaks and additional options for them. After selecting an app and tapping its icon, you’ll see what can be changed. For example, in some iOS apps, you can disable mandatory payment requirements or unlock features unavailable in demo mode. A very useful tool, don’t you think?
Succession
This app removes all changes made to your device after jailbreaking and lets you return iOS to its “stock” state, as it was originally. This is a very useful feature if you got carried away with tweaks and dug too deep into your phone’s settings.
With Succession, you always have the chance to start fresh and jailbreak again, without resetting your device to factory settings using standard methods. Succession also lets you remove the Cydia app if you can’t do it any other way.
Warning: Be careful! This tool will delete all data on your device unless you enable the “Only Restore System Data” option in the settings.
Conclusion
There are countless apps you can install on a jailbroken iPhone. In this article, we briefly covered only the most popular and interesting ones. Many of the programs available in Cydia are paid, some only support older iOS versions, and others can even “brick” your phone, sending it into a “forever Apple” mode (this happened to me once: I had to boot my iPhone into Recovery Mode and restore a clean firmware using iTunes). So, when installing apps from third-party sources, you should exercise caution.
If you can’t find the app you need in Cydia, you can add additional repositories, which are easy to find online.
How to Add Additional Repositories in Cydia
- Open Cydia and tap “Sources” at the bottom of the screen.
- Tap “Add” in the upper left corner.
- Enter the repository URL in the window that appears and tap “Add.”
If that’s still not enough, you can install alternative app stores similar to Cydia—each with its own features and capabilities. But that’s a topic for another article.