Untethered Jailbreak Now Available For iOS 9

A Chinese company called Pangu has released the first untethered jailbreak for devices that run iOS 9, including the likes of the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus.

The tool is currently only available on Windows computers, however it will likely show up for Mac users in the near future. Pangu is currently compatible with all iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch devices, running iOS 9 – iOS 9.0.2. Here’s the full list of devices supported:

• iPhone 4S, 5, 5C, 5S, 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus
• iPad 2, 3, 4, Air, Air 2, Mini, Mini 2, Mini 3, Mini 4
• iPod Touch 5, 6

For those unfamiliar with the idea of jailbreaking, it essentially is a way of hacking the iPhone to enable it to do things like install tweaks and third-party apps from Cydia, which is an unofficial app store specifically for Apple devices that have been jailbroken.

The concept has been around ever since the release of “iPhone OS 1.0,” before the days of it being called iOS. Jailbreaking the iPhone back then meant users could have their own custom wallpapers and Notification Center widgets long before Apple enabled features like this.

Of course, it’s important to mention that fact that jailbreaking an iOS device is not something that Apple wants you to do, and it violates the user’s End User License Agreement, voiding the warranty of the device. Despite this, the device can often be restored to its factory default settings through iTunes.

So, should you jailbreak your device? No, you shouldn’t, unless you know exactly what you’re doing and don’t mind putting your device at risk. In fact, some of the latest malware attacks for iOS specifically target jailbroken devices. An example of this is KeyRaider malware, which ended up accounting for the largest known Apple data theft at the time, affecting a massive 225,000 users. The hack ended up resulting in stolen account names, device IDs, passwords, and so on.

More recently, a hack known as YiSpector targeted jailbroken and non-jailbroken devices, however Apple said that only those that downloaded apps from outside the App Store were affected. It’s people with jailbroken devices that tend to download apps from outside the App Store, meaning those that had jailbroken devices were probably mostly the ones affected.

Before users jailbreaking their device, they should always back up their data through iTunes, as the process could encounter issues or errors, which could result in things like data loss or data corruption. Pangu itself offers instructions for users who want to jailbreak their device, and has done the same thing for iOS 8 and iOS 7.

While users who want to jailbreak their device should proceed at their own risk, there are a number of great tweaks that users can take advantage of after their iOS 9 device has been jailbroken.

For example, Forcy is a tweak that will give users the ability take advantage of 3D Touch quick menus on their non-Force Touch devices, like iPhones older than the iPhone 6s. After users install Forcy, they simply need to long press or swipe up on an app icon from their home screen, and quick access menus will show up, if available.

Another interesting tweak is called Medusa, and it brings a number of iPad-only multitasking features over to iPads or iPhones that otherwise wouldn’t have those features. For example, using the feature users will be able to use the picture-in-picture mode, as well as split view.

Next up is a feature called UntetheredHeySiri, which is another tweak that brings iPhone 6s features to older iPhones. In this case, the feature brings the always-on Hey Siri feature to older iPhones than the iPhone 6s, and essentially allows users to activate Siri simple by saying “Hey, Siri.”

Of course, these tweaks don’t just have to be limited to functional ones. One tweak, called Speed Intensifier, allows users to alter their iOS animations, essentially making it seem like iOS is working faster. Animations can be accelerated as much as 9 times their original speed.

Those that do want to take advantage of the new jailbreak can head to Pangu’s website to do so, but remember that only Windows users can jailbreak as of right now.