. . AdBlocker, Firewall iP and ScreenDimmer have been updated to support iOS 6. They also include  minor fixes and new features. Yllier’s other paid tweaks (FullScreen for Safari/iPad, RingerX VIP) will be updated for iOS 6 soon. If you don’t already know about these apps: AdBlocker AdBlocker is an easy to use and powerful [...]

Jailbreakers: Do not upgrade to iOS6 until a jailbreak is released. You will lose all your jailbreak!

iOS 6 is a total dud. I think it’s by far the worst major upgrade Apple has ever provided. It’s more like a 5.1.2 than a 6.0. Let’s take a look at the major differences moving to iOS6 from iOS 5.

1) Removes youtube
2) Removes google maps.
3) Adds apple maps. No street view, no transit directions. Remember, google has been doing maps a long time. No way apple is doing it as well in a few months.
4) Adds what? Facebook integration, ViP mail, do not disturb? iOS 5 users, you can get “do not disturb” functionality with “ringerx vip” in cydia.

This is definitely not worth an upgrade. And if you are jailbroken on iOS5 definitely do not upgrade to this. You will lose your jailbreak and that’s definitely not worth it for this.

Speaking of disappointments, the iPhone 5 seems equally disappointing. The screen is a little bigger – that’s great. The device is a little faster, also neat. But the change of the dock is huge. How many devices do you plug your iphones into? iHome, car, chargers. All this requires new cables and all these devices stop working. In my home I have 5 docks for charging in various rooms, a car deck with an iPod cable coming out of it. All this becomes useless if I buy an iPhone 5. I’ll stick with iPhone 4s another year.

FullScreen for Safari – the popular tweak, which not only offers a full screen mode for safari but also adds awesome multi-touch gestures has a new feature: Pull-To-Action” in all 4 directions. The “Pull-To-Action” works similar to the well known “pull to refresh”. Assign any of the actions to a direction, pull the browser view, [...]

Edit: absinthe is updated to handle 5.1.1b now so this should no longer be an issue.

Today Apple released 5.1.1b for iPhone 4 GSM devices. If you manage to install this firmware you won’t be able to have an untethered jailbreak until a new version of the Absinthe 2.0 payload for this firmware can be produced. This will probably be sorted out in a few hours but you should all be aware in case you have an iphone 4 GSM (AT&T, for example) and have an issue. Apple did not patch the jailbreak and probably released this without being aware of the jailbreak. But a slightly different payload is required for it to work correctly with Absinthe v2.

Absinthe 2.0 brings us a new untethered jailbreak method for all eligibile devices on firmware 5.1.1. This release is a great collaboration between jailbreak teams and represents countless hours of work. The process requires your PC or Mac to connect your device and perform the jailbreak after updating your device to iOS 5.1.1. Remember to [...]

Here is an update status from Musclenerd regarding the upcoming untethered jailbreak:
* All info below is tentative and subject to last minute refinements

* @pod2g’s 5.1.1 jailbreak+untether is working out great. All devices are covered except for AppleTV3,1, which currently has no path for jailbreaking.
– the initial 5.1.1 plan used a kernel exploit from @westbaer which unfortunately precluded use in iPod3,1 (latest ipod touch) and iPhone2,1 (iPhone 3gs)
– @planetbeing stepped up and provided a kernel exploit that covers both of those. Those two JBers are the bomb!

* The 5.1.1 A5 JB is very similar to the A5 5.0.1 JB. @pimskeks has done a tremendous job supporting both 5.0.1 and 5.1.1 in absinthe

* Similar to 5.0.1, there will also be a 5.1.1 CLI “cinject” binary and redsn0w version of the 5.1.1 JB+untether. Absinthe, cinject, and redsn0w will all provide the same JB in different fashions.

– timing is indeterminate. Plans are for this week, but a number of factors can influence that.

* For those wishing to donate, we’ve set up a new 5.1.1 paypal URL: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=4U6DQGJ2NRVUN

* Please don’t pirate AppStore apps (seriously, please do not).

Apple has released 5.1. This is either being pushed out now or will be shortly. This has some bigger-than-normal impacts for jailbreakers. Please read this carefully.

There is no untethered jailbreak for 5.1. Do not update to it. You will lose your jailbreak, cydia, and all your tweaks..

Absolutely, do not use the onboard iphone software update to update your device. This will most likely render your device unbootable and you will be forced to restore to 5.1.

1) If you are on an iphone 4s or iPad 2, updating to 5.1 is one-way. (This may also be the case for iphone 4 users). You cannot revert back. If you try 5.1 you will be stuck there forever. You will not be able to jailbreak until a new jailbreak is released.

2) If you are on an iPhone 4 or ipad 1 or similar device, you will be able to jailbreak tethered, then install semitether to get a semitethered jailbreak. In short, this will be jailbroken but when you reboot, you will lose your jailbreak until you get back to your computer and rerun redsn0w.

3) If you are on an old 3gs, like always, you can jailbreak untethered.

Finally, some other issues to be concerned with. If you install something in cydia that causes your device to not boot, you have to restore, you will be stuck updating to 5.1. Therefore, I suggest you get SSH installed and learn how to use it. If your device is in an unbootable state, you can fix it via SSH. With SSH installed, you can get further help in our irc channel (irc.thebigboss.org, #ios).

Troubleshooting your device without restore:
If you encounter issues on your device like things are not running stably or such, rather than restoring, try to debug the issue. Here are my suggestions:
1) In cydia uninstall mobile substrate. This will remove many things. Allow that. Reboot the device.
2) After this, test the device. Is it stable? If so, move to step 3.
3) Reinstall one tweak of your choice. Only one. This will reinstall mobile substrate as well.
4) Test with just that one tweak until you’re satisfied your device is stable.
5) Repeat steps 3 & 4 with one tweak at a time until you find one that makes the device unstable. Remove that one only and continue on.

Note: The greenpois0n website is too busy and down at the time of this writing. Wait and be patient.

Today, Chronic dev released Greenpois0n for your A5 devices (iPhone 4s and ipad 2). You can now do an untethered jailbreak on these devices assuming you are running either 5.0 or 5.0.1. If you are not running those FW versions, get onto one ASAP before Apple closes the update window and releases 5.1. As soon as Apple releases 5.1, you can expect that you cannot restore 5.0.1 again and unless you’re already on 5.0.1 you will be unable to jailbreak.

To jailbreak, just download the jailbreak app from greenpois0n web site (called “absinthe”), and run it. At the moment it is released only for OSX (Mac) but will soon have a windows version followed later today.

A short word on how the JB will work. You will attach your device to your mac, run the app, and wait. When it tells you to do something on your device, you can disconnect it and go run the web link “absinthe”. This will attempt to contact the greenpois0n web site and finish the jailbreak. The jailbreak will be completed when the device resprings and you find cydia. If the greenpois0n web site is down when you try to run the icon on the device, instead you can go to settings, vpn, and click “on”. The error “A configuration error occurred” should appear, shortly after the device should respring jailbroken.

Note: for those having problems, these steps worked for me on my “stubborn” device:
1) After the JB fails to do anything, reboot the iphone
2) Close absinthe on your mac
3) Rerun absinthe and it should detect the device and say that it noticed a jailbreak attempt failed and say it has “recovered”.
4) Reboot the device again, and close absinthe again
5) Rerun the jailbreak tool, it will rerun as it did in the first place.
6) After it’s done and says to tap the “jailbreak icon” do not do that! Instead go to your device, load settings, and click the “vpn” setting to “on”. Wait. The device should pop up and error and then respring about 30 seconds after the error.
7) If the device never resprings in step 6, repeat the steps above again until it works.

There is now an untethered jailbreak for everyone not on an iPhone 4s or ipad 2 for 5.0.1. If you are on 5.0.1, you can apply it via Cydia by installing “Corona 5.0.1 Untether”. Alternatively, you can install it with the latest redsn0w. If you are on 5.0, you will have to restore to 5.0.1 first, then you can jailbreak untethered via redsn0w.

The traffic for cydia repositories is huge right now. So if you get any errors related to installation of package, I suggest you try later (or a few days later).

iPhone 4s / iPad 2 jailbreak to follow in a bit. No one has an answer as to when so don’t bother asking.

Finally, if you have semitethered installed, you should probably uninstall it via cydia once you are untethered. It is no longer necessary.

We at SpiritOfLogic are happy to announce the release of PhotoAlbums+ for iOS5! When Apple announced the iOS5 firmware earlier this year it was found that they integrated many tweaks, concepts and interfaces that originated in the jailbreak community. PhotoAlbums+, our powerful camera roll management tool was one of these tweaks. They used much of [...]

Big update to semitethered jailbreak today. v0.9.1 incorporates Saurik’s new mobile substrate. Thanks to Saurik, we are entirely rid of all the daemon patching – this means there’s no more daemon patching or restarting. Most the semi-tether work is now done by mobile substrate. The semitether package from the repository now protects your iOS 5 notification center plugins and gives you the option to patch mobile safari so that it will work on the non-jailbreak reboot mode. I’m still looking into patching mail, if possible.

Summary of changes:
1) Much more stable with new mobile substrate
2) Can patch safari so it works in the non-jailbreak reboot mode
3) App to monitor the status of your semitether and reapply. Check after cydia installs.

This new version will definitely solve all the flakiness problems we had in the past. However, be aware that this is a total rewrite of mobile substrate. Until this appears in a community source, you are beta testing so installing it is entirely at your own risk. As always, please report issues via email.

Also, with an update from MyWi author and Appsync team, we should be compatible with those, too.

Edit: October 30, 2:00am
Updated to v0.9.1. This should be a great update. See my post on it here.
————
Edit: October 23, 2:37am.
I updated to 0.7.9. This version will take about 90 seconds after it first boots up and then your device will respring again. This timing was the only way to get some of the launch daemons to properly relaunch.

This version should fix issues for some of you folks where:
1) Device does not sync with itunes and only errors. Hopefully solved.
2) Device reboots after 2-3 minutes.
3) App sync issue – this is unworkable. Appsync hard patches system files and does not even use mobile substrate. I had to conflict with it. For now, semi-tether boot is impossible with appsync. You guys need to bug those guys to fix appsync to use mobile substrate (like everyone else uses).

Note, Saurik is working on an update to mobile substrate that will solve many of the issues with the semi-tether package. Hopefully this will be out in a day or two. At this time, we can finalize beta testing. I plan to hold further updates until after Saurik has released his mobile substrate update. Saurik’s updates will eliminate the need for the long 90 second respring on boot also.

This update was only tested on iphone 4. After saurik’s mobile substrate changes, more devices will be tested. Next updates coming in next 2-3 days.

——————————–
Original Post:
My iOS5 semitethered jailbreak package is ready for beta testing. What is semitethered jailbreak and why do you care? In short, it is protection for if your device reboots while you’re on the road. Read on.

As you may know, iOS5 currently has a tethered jailbreak. This means that after you have jailbroken and installed most stuff you care about, you go to reboot your device, and it will no longer boot. You will be either stuck at apple logo forever, or you will get to itunes restore screen. When this happens, you have to hook up to your computer and use redsn0w “just boot” feature which gets you rebooted successfully again. It’s not all bad, as iOS5 is pretty stable. But if your device crashes and reboots while you’re out on the road, you are screwed and without a phone until you get home.

An untethered jailbreak is one that does not have such problems. Here you can reboot and the device reboots successfully. Because we are using the limera1n exploit discovered from Geohot last year, we are always guaranteed a tethered jailbreak on last generation devices. A new exploit will need to be found to untether us.

To get us through this period, I have worked on a semi-tethered solution. The semi-tethered jailbreak will allow you to reboot on the road, but with limited functionality. It is enough that you are no longer stranded, and you can use your phone, text, and many other features. This is just until you get home and can use redsn0w again to “just boot tethered”. Once you do that, you’re back to fully functional state.

Here is a summary of what you can and cannot do when in semi-tethered reboot state. Remember, this is only when your device crashed and rebooted on the road and before you got back to your computer to “just boot”. It is better than being stuck in apple logo:

1) Can use phone, sms (text messages)
2) Can use every other stock app on iphone.
3) Cannot use mobile safari
4) Can use other appstore web browsers such as atomic web browser
5) Cannot use mail app. You could install a gmail app from appstore or such instead.
6) You cannot use any jailbreak tweak, app, cydia until you boot tethered.
7) While in the semitether booted state, you should not add a jailbreak ios5 notification such as sbsettings to notifications during this state or your device will be stuck in a respring loop until you get home to “boot tethered”.

Those are all the limitations I have found so far. There may be some others. I may provide a more technical write up on why these limitations exist, but for now it doesn’t really matter. They just do.

Now, there are some other caveats to installing this package:

1) The device will take longer to boot up. When you reboot, it has to reload every service. It will respring a couple times also.
2) According to Saurik, there are some “problems” to reloading all daemons on the fly. This is why mobile substrate installation requires “reboot device” in cydia. I have not experienced any of these problems, but I am not promising they do not exist. This is why we will need testing to see which problems may occur.

I believe the good outweigh the bad here. Once the untethered jailbreak is out, you will not need or want to install this semitether package. In future iOS versions when we are back to having only a tethered jailbreak, you should be able to install this again to semitether your jailbreak.

As far as support for this package, please send me email preferably from Cydia so the proper semitether subject is used. If you want to email me from a computer, and want a response, use this subject: “Cydia/APT(A): semitether”. Remember, this is still in beta stages and may not be perfect. Do not install this if you are not prepared for that.

As for current testing, I have only tested this on an iphone 4 GSM running iOS5. As further testing shows success, I will update this page. Further, when this package seems stable enough, I may move it into the main bigboss source.

To install this, add the following repository to cydia: http://thebigboss.org/semitether. Note: after install, you will have to reboot your device, so make sure you are prepared at a computer to reboot tethered with redsn0w or just “home button out” of cydia and manually respring until you get home.

To test the success of this, simply reboot your device. If it boots up, it worked. Make sure you are near your computer so you can tether boot it after to get your jailbreak functionality back.

. AdBlocker, FullScreen for Safari, Firewall iP and ScreenDimmer have been updated for full compatibility with iOS 5. Because the release of iOS 5 is imminent and because working jailbreak(s) for most devices will be available soon, Yllier has already made most of his great tweaks compatible with Apple’s upcoming iOS 5. Saurik is currently [...]

iOS 5 is out today. For those of you jailbreakers, you should be aware of the status. You may want to hold off on the update for now because the jailbreak is tethered:

1) A tethered jailbreak is available via redsn0w for all devices except iPad 2 and the new iPhone 4s.

2) Tethered jailbreak means you will have to use redsn0w to enter DFU mode and have it “just boot tethered” every time you power cycle your device. (Just tapping power is fine, you have to actually shut it off).

3) After you run redsn0w, even the very first time, you will have a white cydia icon. This is because you have to still power cycle, enter DFU mode, and boot tethered. The next reboot will come after you install something that requires mobile substrate (almost everything). After installing this, the device will only hit apple logo unless you do the boot tethered option.

4) If iOS5 turns out to be stable, tethered jailbreak may be manageable for many of you. But be aware that if something happens while you’re away from your computer and your device restarts, you will have to get to a computer before you can use your device again. This is probably not so bad for an ipod or ipad. Maybe not great for your only phone.

5) Many free and paid tweaks have not yet been updated. Developers are working on updates so be patient.

6) Non-factory unlockers should stay away from ios5 for now or you will lose your unlock! (This should go without saying).

7) iOS 4.3.4 and 4.3.5 is also tethered, so 4.3.3 is the only firmware that can be jailbroken untethered for now.

8) Improperly written notification center add-ons may cause your device to be in a reboot cycle. A mobilesubstrate update is due out later this week that will protect you against this. To protect yourself in the meantime, make sure you have openSSH installed so you are able to manually delete any notification center tweaks you install should this happen to you. Otherwise, you will have to restore and jailbreak again.

Aren’t you feel sick to go into app to take actions when a Twitter push notification arrives and you are in the middle of using other app? TwitkaFly basically solves that problem. It allows you to reply push notifications’ mentions from “Twitter.app or Tweetbot.app” from anywhere on your device. In addition, its unique and amazing [...]