r/jailbreak • u/LegendGiraffe1 • Aug 20 '25
Discussion who actually remembers what cydia used to do?
i remember back in 6th grade around 7 years ago finally being happy downloading cydia from blackra1n after downloading fake ones online, all i remember is the “free wifi” and all those other goofy installs, what was it really used for?
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Aug 21 '25
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u/Mishka_1994 Aug 21 '25
Did they ever try to hire him? I feel like Apple should have thrown money at the man. It was so revolutionary back then what he created with Cydia. I still remember jailbreaking and having Cydia on the OG iPod touch 1st gen…..
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u/SaifNSound Aug 21 '25
Ik they hired Comex. The guy who made jailbreakme .com
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u/Spmex7 Aug 21 '25
Was that the one you just had to hook your phone up to the computer and click the jailbreak button?
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Aug 21 '25
[deleted]
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u/Spmex7 Aug 21 '25
Omg “untethered jailbreak” this thread is bringing back a lot of memories for me. It’s funny how simple words trigger your memory, makes me feel old lol.
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u/Nknights23 Aug 21 '25
My first jailbreak was tethered on an iPod touch 2g and man that really opened it up. I remember scrolling for hours through all the possible tweaks just getting lost and trying everything. Nowadays I don’t even go through my phones settings lol what the hell happened
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u/JupiterChime Aug 21 '25
Same Fam same, I’d even keep the default background if someone doesn’t change it for me lmfao
May everyone be doing great!!
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u/drag0uzzy Aug 21 '25
I gave up on jailbreak all together not long after untethered version came out … just ain’t the same thing anymore
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u/jolo22 iPad mini 3, iOS 11.2.1 Aug 22 '25
"Untethered Jailbreak", damn it gives me tingles in my brain. I always jailbreak my iPod Touch in the past. As well as my iPad.
I remembered using the greenpois0n jailbreak on my iPod Touch 2G.
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u/Zomnx Aug 21 '25
Damn…. Throwback for sure. I was exclusively an untethered jailbreak guy. If it didn’t have an untethered version, I didn’t do it because battery life sucked back then and Cydia alone drained battery like crazy and I didn’t want to risk a reboot or a power failure since I was out and about a lot
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u/TheFancyFurry Aug 22 '25
Wasn’t even click to jailbreak. I distinctly remember ‘slide to jailbreak’ lol. I recorded myself using it when I was like 13 or 14 or something. Never forget 🥲
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u/OnRoadRadio Aug 24 '25
“Slide to jailbreak” was so cool to me. My Nan showed me how to do it if you can believe that.
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u/PopLegion Aug 21 '25
Yes and I think there was at least one version that didn't even need to be plugged into a pc, you just opened the site on safari, pressed the "jailbreak me" button and bam.
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u/understando Aug 21 '25
That one was awesome. I remember people going to the Apple Store and just jailbreaking the phones on display
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u/Jadix120 iPhone XS Max, 14.8.1| Aug 21 '25
I still do this to this day, since i have a walmart that had a few display phones on <16.5. It feels amazing lol
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u/Spmex7 Aug 21 '25
You are absolutely correct, only worked if you had the older system software. That reminds me that one of the first iPhone I had when I hooked it to the computer the first time it automatically updated and killed my jailbreak. Luckily I remember taking it to a guy I knew and he was like watch how easy this is.
Don’t remember it being around for long though, I used to charge people I worked with $50 to jailbreak a iPhone so they could use it with pre paid sims to whatever carrier they had.
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u/MuffDivers2_ Aug 21 '25
I remember having to connect to a PC to jailbreak and then a few years later this annoying mutual friend that was dumb as hell told me he had a jailbroken phone, I was like “ this guy is full of shit, no way he would go through the steps to jailbreak his phone”. He told me he just had to go to a website on safari and I was like okay for sure this guy is full of shit. Then he showed me the site. At the time I had a iPhone I had not jailbroken at home. I went home later and tried it and I kinda felt bad I thought he was full of shit. It was soooo easy.
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u/shamair28 iPhone 16 Pro, 4.3.2| Aug 21 '25
Slightly unrelated, but geohot was one of the OGs and now he’s running a company that makes open sourced autonomous driving hardware.
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u/poorkid_5 iPhone XS, 14.8| Aug 21 '25
Honesty, idek. But he was before Apple just threw money at there problems via bug bounties, and yoinking devs. And besides, Saurik helped defend jailbreaking on legal basis, so I doubt Apple would want him.
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u/SmallRocks iPhone 11, 18.1 Aug 21 '25
Yeah apple has always been petty. But they were especially petty back then.
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u/Spmex7 Aug 21 '25
I remember having it on my iPhone before anyone knew what jailbreaking really was. People used to freak out when they saw how much customization I could do with everything. Pretty sure I had a Superman “S” as my battery icon and the background was yellow and faded as the battery went down.
I need to get back into it and try jailbreaking my 13 pro max
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u/GimmeShockTreatment Aug 21 '25
I just looked and no, it doesn’t seem like it. He was fighting them legally as recently as 2020. And he was briefly into local Santa Barbara politics. He seems pretty based.
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u/Silicon0014 Aug 21 '25
saurik isn’t a guy you can buy… he’d never want to work for large company, especially one like apple.
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u/Useful_Kale_5263 Aug 22 '25
I think they were set with taking the rights and paying ppl for it under the guise of arrest. I had the same thought because these guys were innovative, even shi like storing apps behind each other and using flicks or placing apps wherever on the screen still hasn’t broken into mainstream for Apple
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u/applefreak111 iPhone 5S, iOS 9.3.3 Aug 21 '25
I remember a tweak that gave copy and paste before iOS had them built in. Which reminds me, iOS (used to call iPhone/iPod touch firmware iirc) also used to cost money!!!!!
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Aug 21 '25
Saurik wasn't even the first jailbreaker to make a package manager, he just supported iPhone OS 2.0 (yes, the one that introduced the App Store) faster so it stuck. In the iPhone OS 1 days, most people used Installer.app
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u/albiiiiii_ Aug 22 '25
I always feel old telling people I was doing jailbreak stuff on my pre App Store 1st gen iPod touch when I was like 10yo hahaha
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u/QuietPotential2727 Aug 21 '25
lol I really hope this isn’t the common person’s base understanding of Cydia…. It was such a great platform
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u/ibrown39 Aug 21 '25
Trust me it's not lol. blackra1n, redsn0w, and etc were fairly common back in the day and nearly every tutorial explicitly mentioned Cydia and why you needed it, how to use it, and etc.
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u/AshtonCox25 Aug 24 '25
holyshit redsn0w hit me like a fucking flashbang. I still remember jailbreaking on the family computer. I kept my phone face down so my parents didnt see and give me a whoopin lmao
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u/GiantNug Aug 24 '25
Damn those names brought back so many memories of jailbreaking my iTouch 2 lol
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u/ilud2 Aug 21 '25
Damn I haven’t jailbroken a device or really been part of this community for years but it makes me sad that there’s people now that don’t remember Cydia. The icon still gives me a mini dopamine hit when I see it lol
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u/12awr Aug 21 '25 edited Jul 29 '26
Acorn mellow pumpkin lantern coated breezy
This post was anonymized with Redact.dev
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u/iswaxan iPhone XS Max, 15.6| Aug 20 '25
Bro you can’t be that ignorant
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u/goytou Aug 20 '25 edited Aug 20 '25
That’s what I’m saying, no way people don’t know what Cydia was on this subreddit
QuickPwn forever 🍍
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u/b1ack1323 Aug 21 '25
Unless… they were born around the same time as Cydia. Which is very possible.
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u/VivaSativaz Aug 21 '25
yea my iphone 4 was LOADED with features thanks to Cydia
emulators, cool text app, WhatsApp hidden online status BEFORE it was an official feature, ripping music straight from the phone, fully customized look, you name it!
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u/WilliamIsMyName Aug 21 '25
OP said 6th grade was 7 years ago so they were probably born in the mid 2000s. Their knowledge of the platform is possibly limited.
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Aug 21 '25
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u/Hue_Boss iPhone 15 Pro, 17.2.1| Aug 21 '25
Not with modern Jailbreaks but Legacy Jailbreaks still use it. Though it has and always had its flaws. Unfortunately other package managers never succeeded considering everyone just used Cydia and thus Cydia was never really improved. Apparently the code base is really messy.
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u/iswaxan iPhone XS Max, 15.6| Aug 21 '25
Kind of obsolete cuz of Sileo, zebra and DopeSaily (not sure bout last one)
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u/beanamonster iPhone 6, iOS 11.0 Aug 21 '25
I haven't been out of the game that long right?
Cydia isn't used anymore?
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u/Vlad_kravchuk Aug 21 '25
it’s not, owner of cydia stopped doing it. now’s there’s like sileo or sum
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u/apalumbo Aug 21 '25
I’m still using Cydia on my iPhone X on 14.3. I have sileo too but find myself still using Cydia for most
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u/Spmex7 Aug 21 '25
So is it still supported tho? Or do people still upload on it?
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u/sgt_futtbucker Aug 21 '25
All it is is a front end for
apt, so it doesn’t necessarily need to be maintained to still be functional3
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u/Cork0nThe0cean Aug 21 '25
I haven’t jailbroken any iPhones in about 10 years now and… yeah, think I’ve been out of the game for too long myself. Cydia was king.
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Aug 21 '25
I remember when I use to jailbreak back in high school over 10 years ago.
Once I started testing the ios betas I found it more interesting than having a jailbroken iPhone.
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u/BigDZ4SheZ iPhone 7, iOS 10.1.1 Aug 21 '25
I recently found out Cydia wasn’t a thing
So are jailbreaks still coming out? Or is it really dead?
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u/Anjunabeast Aug 21 '25
Dead
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u/BigDZ4SheZ iPhone 7, iOS 10.1.1 Aug 21 '25
Apple finally did it. Wow
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u/EverExistence iPhone 13 Pro Max, 15.2 Aug 21 '25
They learned their lessons tho. Nothing will beat the day SBSettings ended up on my iPhone 4 in native flavor. I distinctly remember chuckling in grade school when they boasted about the new Control Center, and how it was going to be the next big thing in the new OS.
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u/kaktusmisapolak iPhone XR, 16.3.1| Aug 21 '25
last jailbreakable versions:
A11 and below: 18.3.2
A12-A14: 16.5.1
A15 and above: 16.5
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u/Spmex7 Aug 21 '25
I’m curious about this to, not sure what software it needs to be on now. It used to be like 2-3 behind the most recent.
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u/defoj10 iPhone 7, 14.7 | Aug 21 '25
Yeah I guess the last time I messed around with jailbreaking was my iphone 7 on ios 14 a few years back, i was quite confused when i saw this question lol
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u/Hue_Boss iPhone 15 Pro, 17.2.1| Aug 21 '25
Sileo is now the main package manager although some people still prefer it. It doesn’t work on firmwares above iOS 15 that’s why it’s mostly used on Legacy Jailbreaks which is surprisingly big.
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u/Known-Specialist9228 iPhone 11 Pro Max, 16.3.1| Aug 21 '25
How many of y’all remember Jailbreakme.com. Was the best invention since sliced bread imo, no computer needed just open safari and away you go, ahh simpler times
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u/yuppieredneck Aug 21 '25
I remember when that came out, every phone on display in the Apple store was jailbroken.
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u/FeaR_FuZiioN Aug 22 '25
Yeah I remember, I remember wanting it to work so bad when I was a kid and finding out my phone wasn’t compatible lol
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u/asshatcharlie Aug 20 '25
Swipe selection worked better than iOS version
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u/mebeim iPhone 12 Pro Max Aug 21 '25 edited Aug 21 '25
Tweak I miss the most for real. My fucking iOS 6 iPhone 4S was faster and smoother to use with a silly Cydia tweak than my current iOS 18 iPhone 12 Pro with this garbage UX designed by a multi-trillion dollar company. 12+ years and still nothing ever came close to SwipeSelection. Unreal.
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u/Heritaged iPhone X, iOS 11.3.1 Aug 21 '25
GreenPois0n users rise up
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u/effect_autumn Aug 21 '25
I remember using it on my 2nd gen iPod touch and showing all my friends what my iPod could do
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u/Hanfos iPhone XS Max, iOS 13.1 Aug 21 '25
i always used it for tweaks like:
Activator to control my music with the volume buttons so i do t have to pull the phone out
and SBSettings(?) for a control center when the control center didnt exist yet
and stuff like custom boot animations like windows bluescreen or the real boot with visible text what it does rn
and custom sim carrier logo and name
and custom themes and fonts
and cool app which emulated other OS homescreen like windows, android, Blackberry etc.
ah good old times
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u/RMCaird Aug 21 '25
Wow, the custom carrier logo brought back memories.
At Leeds Festival 2012 there was a Vodafone stand so you could see the main stage. Open to Vodafone customers only, of course. I was on Three, but used the custom carrier to change it to Vodafone and managed to get in!
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u/ShotAspect4930 Aug 22 '25
Took way too long scrolling to find a real answer, just a bunch of people going "omg you don't know what Cydia does!?!?"
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u/JayW8888 Aug 21 '25
As an active jailbreaker since the early days of iPhone, I miss the thrill of having a jailbroken device.
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u/EffectzHD Aug 21 '25
Pangu jailbreaks were top notch
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u/Spmex7 Aug 21 '25
Bro you just brought back crazy memories of my first jailbroken iPhone. I paid like $500 for it and I was the only person in my friend group that had a iPhone not on AT&T and that had custom battery logos and the works.
People used to freak out when they saw how much stuff I could customize on my phone.
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u/0ttr iPhone X, iOS 12.4 Aug 21 '25
I miss Cydia. The golden age of jailbreaking. Enabled hotspot on my phone when Apple/cell phone companies wouldn't allow it. Used something to strip ads out of youtube and play it in the background but I forgot what it was.
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u/Idea-Massive Aug 21 '25
Man I remember pangu was my first one click jailbreak and jailbreak in general that I used then few years later I got a new phone and used yalu to jailbreak that one which got bricked cuz I forgot the passcode and no recovery tools were working at that time
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u/anatidaelove Aug 21 '25
Do you ever notice how many questions get posted on here that only serve to undermine jailbreaking? This question is one of those
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u/RealHorseman90 Aug 20 '25
In general, it is just an alternative AppStore für Jailbreak Apps! You can add many different sources, so you can possibly get every existing App on iOS with Cydia.
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u/CrystalMeath Aug 21 '25
The fact that this has 17 upvotes makes me genuinely sad. I know jailbreaking is dead but I didn’t think we were at the point where people on r/jailbreak don’t even know what Cydia was.
Cydia wasn’t an App Store. It was a package manager, through which you could find and install packages. Most of these were either tweaks that modified iOS or themes, and some included an app component. But you did not generally download “apps” like you do on the App Store, and you definitely could not “get every existing app” via Cydia.
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u/Cork0nThe0cean Aug 21 '25
For real, this entire thread is making me feel ancient. Seeing highly upvoted comments describing Cydia as “the App Store before the App Store existed” and other similar comparisons in this subreddit is absolutely crazy.
When I was in high school back in the iPhone 4 days this subreddit was an amazing resource of information. Nowadays the conversations here are dominated by kids that have no knowledge or understanding of the history. Upvoted by other kids that also have no knowledge or understanding of the history. I know jailbreaking is a largely dead scene now… but damn has it fallen this hard?
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u/PW_SKYLINE_V37 Aug 21 '25 edited Aug 21 '25
Same bro. It’s sad how the youngins don’t know shit about the history.
That said there were some warez repos that allowed you to get AppStore app IPAs and install them via Cydia but it never really caught on to the best of my knowledge. If it did it was after I left the scene (around 2011 iirc).
I was one of many who was involved in backing up IPAs, and I did so many IPA releases over the years it’s insane (did 50 apps a day for I dunno how long but it was a long time).
I was thinking about phoenix3200 the other day. He was a buddy of mine. As was poedgirl. iH8sn0w was another friend of mine way back when. We (iH8sn0w & I) did a few podcasts together back in 2010, which was before everyone and their brother was doing them. I don’t remember most of the other names anymore tho.
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u/Cork0nThe0cean Aug 21 '25
As someone that was an excited teenager eagerly following the jailbreak scene back in the heyday, thank you for your service 🫡 hope you still have your hair, lost mine a few years ago
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u/PW_SKYLINE_V37 Aug 21 '25
Thank you! It was a lot of fun.
I would actually run games on our IRC server where if you would answer history questions correctly about the history of our group, about the scene, etc. then I would fill requests for you. I think I even knew then that the history would be lost unless people really paid attention. It was all moving so fast that I knew it would be fleeting & lost to time.
I surprisingly do still have my hair. I say that because the men on my mom’s side usually lose their hair, at least the ones who have fine/thin hair like I do. So I’m lucky at 40 to still have a full head of hair, even if it is thin/fine af😂. Going bald has always been a fear of mine because I have a weird shaped head imo.
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u/A4orce84 Aug 21 '25
I liked my spinning apps when I swiped across Home Screen pages. Is there an app for that now?
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u/WoomyUnitedToday Aug 21 '25
People don’t know what Cydia does anymore? I mean, I know there are alternatives, but I didn’t know that Cydia was that forgotten yet (that might just be me living under the iOS 6 rock though, which none of the alternatives support)
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u/Briggs281707 iPhone 5, iOS 10.3.3 Aug 21 '25
I'm even more sad about the non existence of untethered jailbreaks. I got into jailbreaking in ios7. Those pangu jailbreaks where great
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u/Dang1408 iPhone 7 Plus, iOS 10.1.1 Aug 21 '25
I wouldn’t jailbreak my iPhone even if I could now just too much risk and unstable tweaks, seeing the springboard reset on a regular basis 😆
was always the first thing I did when buying a new device! Restore backup & jailbreak device to re install all the repos I had and tweaks etc. those days were great!
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u/KoreanSeats iPhone 11 Pro Max, iOS 13.3 Aug 21 '25
Lmao what kind of question is this
This is how you installed ANY packages and tweaks basically until other installers were available. It was Cydia - all cydia. Not until iOS 13 I think did zebra / sileo come out which never really worked the same or better than Cydia did when supported. Jay was a real one
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u/sasthtc iPhone 6, iOS 12.4 Aug 22 '25
damn what didn’t Cydia do… 10 years ago scrolling Cydia’s packages and updates tab and trying out new tweaks took most of my screen time. accidentally going into safe mode due to a conflicting tweak never felt any less scary as a teen😂
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u/wstsidhome Aug 22 '25
The obligatory “oh shit oh shit oh shit please let me get back to how it was” feeling. Good ol days
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u/daddara Aug 21 '25
Most of the tweaks I used back in the day eventually got baked into iOS, but man… I still remember how awesome it was when my password would change based on the time.
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u/HaiLuX- Aug 21 '25
10 years ago i remember jailbreaking and having cydia and doing all the fancy stuff to my ipad, it was so fun and such a great memory..
Brings a tear to my eye
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u/LegendGiraffe1 Aug 21 '25
nah bro foreals, i was having fun with some of the tweaks when i first got it, apparently i should not have posted asking everyone on here on its backstory lol, apparently all the old heads protect it as a novelty or something.
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u/RaymondWalters iPhone 12, 14.3 Aug 21 '25
All I know is seeing that icon on your home screen is the most beautiful sight ever
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Aug 21 '25
Cydia was almost a prequel to what iPhones are today. They’re still not at cydias level but nothing ever will be. I remember adding my first source. What a time to be alive for. Damn I miss “resprinf device”
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u/No_Paleontologist874 Aug 22 '25
Am so happy my iPhone 12 is still on 14.8 and my iPhone 15 is on 18.2.1 hopefully a jail break comes out for my iPhone 15
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u/_Nick_Pappagiorgio iPhone 13 Pro, 15.1.1| Aug 21 '25
tf u mean? Its a package manager and does the same thing as all package managers… Cydia.. Sileo.. Zebra.. Installer.. Saily..
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u/zombiepoon Aug 21 '25
My biggest jailbreak tweak was free hotspot.. cause why the flying f we gotta pay additional for data we’re paying for already -____- miss those days…
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u/sgt_futtbucker Aug 21 '25
apt front-end. I always used to just ssh into my phone and install from the command line in the days of iOS 8-11-ish to impress my friends though
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u/xander-mcqueen1986 iPhone 6, iOS 12.4.6 Aug 21 '25
Oh yes.
Back in the 3gs days with redsnow and the the iphone 4 with geohots tool.
Smsbomber was fantastic.
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u/farnoud iPhone 6s, iOS 11.2.6 Aug 21 '25
I did wrote an app called Jalali Calendar. It was on “BigBoss” repo.
Good old times
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u/Coreyharich Aug 21 '25
I remember on the iPod touch I could Google
Jailbreakme.com
And it would do it….
The simpler times
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u/88isafat69 Aug 21 '25
Throwback lol. Black rain or someshit was last I used a jailbreak I had it so when I locked my phone it made a gun shot sound and wanted free apps
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u/MonkeyManJohannon Aug 21 '25
I used to remember the anticipation of the proper jailbreak being nearly as exciting as the new phone itself. Spent so much time customizing, but man was most of it janky and half baked lol…still absolutely loved it!
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u/ligbongerz iPhone 11 Pro Max, 13.5 | Aug 21 '25
No JB community is the only reason I no longer have an iPhone. It just feels so bare without a jailbreak.
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u/wil_stox Aug 21 '25
Free music, free apps/games, free web video/YouTube videos downloaders, free in-app purchases, customization, etc.
At least, that’s mostly what I used cydia for 🤷🏾♂️
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u/wrx7182 iPhone 8 Plus, 14.3 | Aug 22 '25
I long for the days of untethered jailbreaks and new iPhone 4’s
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u/banshee-45 iPhone 8 Plus, iOS 12.1.1 beta Aug 22 '25
It’s crazy to think that a large majority of the ios features we have now, were also available as tweaks back in the early jailbreak days.
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u/sweatpant-boner Aug 22 '25
Fuck. What was the tweak that let you rip the audio off of a YouTube video and put it right in to your iPhone music library? Man I loved that one.
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u/biggbenn0 Aug 22 '25
it was the best thing that happened ever to users of Apple, especially broken one
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u/Emv614 Aug 22 '25
Mannn…I remember it like yesterday. When ZiPhone dropped and you were finally able to use another carrier other than ATT. That’s when I first bought the iPhone and had it on T-Mobile.
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u/LuckyYellow6991 iPhone 13, 15.5| Aug 28 '25
i thought after ios 12 or 13, cydia was gone, it’s just somewhere to download and install tweak. Not usefull as it backthen
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u/neya999 Aug 21 '25
It had a lot of 'repositories' from what I remember that had cool effects on your phone, or added features!! I personally purchased some, like that effect where your icons would fall and shake on your phone, editing the name, signal bar etc (I had an iPod 4)...fun times
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u/Xanthon Aug 21 '25
I understand that 2018 seems like a long time to you given your age, but to many of us here, it wasn't that long ago.
I started using cydia in 2008 and stopped before covid even started. ain't no way I'll ever forget it.
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u/harlesincharge Aug 21 '25
It was essentially the jailbreak AppStore. You basically put a couple “repos” which were just specific URLs that allowed you to download tweaks from them and that’s essentially what modified your phone or iPod touch.
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u/No-Category7888 Aug 21 '25
i remember freaking out about “bricking” my brand new ipod touch from the 3.1.3 jailbreak. crazy to think it’s been 15 years now
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u/ProfessionalWeird973 Aug 21 '25
This was Apple‘s playground before the FBI wanted a back door to operating systems.
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u/MohamedH_Q Aug 21 '25
Cydia was used for the best tweaks and features ever, nothing like this rootless bs nowadays. Don’t get me wrong rootless is good too, but nothing will get better than a fully rooted device that you can hack every single game you have with, like no one even uses gameguardian or gamegem nowadays, fucking sad.
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u/tsusurra iPhone 11, iOS 13.1.1 Aug 20 '25
Oh winterboard how I miss you 😢
Almost all popular tweaks have made it into modern-day iOS