Getting started
New to developing for jailbroken devices? Welcome, it's fun and challenging! Hopefully you already have some experience with Objective-C. You will want to get familiar with Cydia Substrate and Theos, and you can study some Open Source Projects to see how existing tweaks work. See Getting Started and also take a look at Best Practices and Pitfalls. If you're looking for a more thorough and sequential tutorial, take a look at the book iOS App Reverse Engineering and its forum iOSRE.
How to ask for help: There are tags for "jailbreak", "Cydia", and "Theos" on Stack Overflow, a site for programming questions in general; feel free to ask there as well. On Reddit, there's r/jailbreakdevelopers. For non-development-related troubleshooting questions, try r/jailbreak.
Overview of contents
Frameworks:
Applications:
System directories:
Other parts of iOS:
- dyld_shared_cache
- Bluetooth
- CgBI file format
- Coprocessors
- Daemons
- Entitlements
- iOS Keyboard
- launchd
- NFC
- Notifications
- Seatbelt
By iOS Version
- New in iOS 17: Updating extensions for iOS 17
- New in iOS 16: Updating extensions for iOS 16
- New in iOS 15: Updating extensions for iOS 15
- New in iOS 14: Updating extensions for iOS 14
- New in iOS 13: Updating extensions for iOS 13
- New in iOS 12: Updating extensions for iOS 12
- New in iOS 11: Updating extensions for iOS 11
- New in iOS 10: Updating extensions for iOS 10, ControlCenterUI.framework, UserNotificationsUIKit.framework.
- New in iOS 9: Updating extensions for iOS 9, Updating extensions for iOS 9.3.3, Breadcrumbs.
- New in iOS 8: Updating extensions for iOS 8, AssertionServices.framework, SBSRestartRenderServerAction, FBSSystemService, UIAlertController.
- New in iOS 7: Updating extensions for iOS 7, Debugging on iOS 7, Downgrading iPhone 4 from iOS 7, BiometricKit.framework, TouchID, UIBackdropView, AVFlashlight, SBAppSliderController.
- New in iOS 6: BackBoardServices.framework, backboardd, ChatKit.framework, BKSProcessAssertion.
- New in iOS 5: SBIconView, CKMadridService, SBAppContextHostManager.
- New in iOS 4: SBAppSwitcherModel.
Development tools:
- Theos, Logos, NIC, Logify
- Reverse Engineering Tools
- Jailbreak Development Tools
- Preferences specifier plist
- SSH Over USB
- Cydia Substrate (MobileSubstrate)
- debugserver (remote debugging)
- ldid
- On-device toolchains
- Retrieving SDKs
- Xcode
Extensions:
- ActionMenu
- AppList
- Cydget
- Flipswitch
- IconSupport
- LayerSnapshotter
- libactivator
- libhide
- libobjcipc
- libstatusbar
- PreferenceLoader
- RocketBootstrap
- WinterBoard
- libPassword
- more »
Other articles about development:
Translated articles:
- Français: Main page/fr • MobileSubstrate/fr • SSH Over USB/fr • UIFont/fr • UIColor/fr • ActorKit.framework/fr • IOSOpenDev/fr
- ไทย: SSH Over USB/th • SpringBoard.app/th • UIColor/th
- Deutsch: Theos/de
Editing this wiki
- If you have anything at all to contribute, feel free to do so!
Some ideas for information to contribute:
- Add more projects to the list of Open Source Projects, or fill out details on that page.
- Expand Getting Started for new developers - what do they need to know before beginning? How do they set up a development environment on OS X, Windows, and Linux? What are common beginner's mistakes that they should watch out for? How to reverse-engineer parts of iOS for writing tweaks? How to debug with GDB and learn about memory management?
- Update articles that haven't been significantly edited in a few years, such as Seatbelt and Crack prevention. See Special:AncientPages for a list of articles that haven't been updated recently.
- Help Cycript explain why Cycript is fun - syntax highlighting, injection, auto-completion, generally exploring around.
- Make a page that documents a class or framework you're familiar with.
- If you've developed a library that other developers can use or write addons/plugins/extensions for, make a page that documents your project.
- Update Xcode with better information about how to build apps for jailbroken devices.
- Make the homepage more useful! For example, add links to good pages that are hidden/buried deep within the wiki.
- The following articles are linked from nowhere in the wiki: Special:LonelyPages - you can fix that by linking them somewhere.
- Browse around the wiki to find pages that might need updating.
- Write an article that is in demand: Special:WantedPages.
- Translate an existing article into a non-English language. To do so, make a new page with this name format:
Article name/[language code]
. Here's the list of language codes. For example: PreferenceLoader/de or Libactivator/sv.
Good Edit Candidates
If you're looking for some articles to work on that don't require a ton of in-depth RE, or are important yet woefully outdated, the following articles are good candidates:
- Jailbreak detection
- CATransition
- Code Signing - Not bad info, needs updated primary instructions for current year
- Notifications - Update with info about libMRYIPC, new pages, etc.
- Best Practices
- iOS Keyboard - Woefully outdated + no useful info
- iWidgets - Conglomerate and link to modern replacements.