iOS 8.3 was released yesterday, paving the way for an iOS 8.3 jailbreak to arrive soon. Here’s how to prepare for the iOS 8.3 jailbreak right now, that way you’ll be ready to upgrade when it officially goes live.
Apple released iOS 8.3 yesterday, coming with emoji updates, wireless CarPlay support, and the officially out-of-beta iCloud Photo Library, but the latest version of iOS has yet to be jailbroken.
At first, the TaiG jailbreak team was expected to release an iOS 8.2 jailbreak at some point last month, and the most likely timeline was just before the 2015 Mobile Security Summit, which took place towards the end of March, and it was possible. It was the perfect time for the TaiG team to release the iOS 8.2 jailbreak, which they said was already there.
However, iOS 8.3 is now out, making an iOS 8.2 jailbreak completely controversial, but allowing TaiG to switch to iOS 8.3 and jailbreak that version instead.
If you remember, iOS 8.1.3 has officially patched the TaiG iOS 8 jailbreak and this has been ported to iOS 8.2. A Support page on Apple’s website Lists the TaiG Jailbreak Team as the source of a vulnerability that Apple fixed in iOS 8.1.3; this means that iOS 8.1.3 is non-jailbreakable and as an extension iOS 8.2 is also non-jailbreakable.
In any case, while you wait for an iOS 8.3 jailbreak to be released, here’s how you can prepare for it to be ready when it arrives.
Back Up via iTunes
This really goes without saying, but it still needs to be said: Before jailbreaking your device, be sure to fully back up your iPhone or iPad via iTunes. Backup saves all your apps and settings, as a fresh reinstall of iOS is required to jailbreak your device. Also, if something goes wrong with the jailbreak, you can go back to where you were before and try jailbreaking again.
After jailbreaking, you can restore an iTunes backup to get all your apps and settings back to normal.
Backup Your Jailbreak Tweaks
Unfortunately, backing up your iPhone or iPad via iTunes will not back up your jailbreak settings, so you will need to do this separately.
Fortunately, Cydia has an app you can download. PkgBackupThis allows you to backup your jailbreak settings to Dropbox and then restore your device after jailbreaking it.
However, after jailbreaking my iPhone or iPad I usually like to start from scratch because after a while, a bunch of jailbreak tweaks pile up that I will never use. Jailbreaking a newer version of iOS gives me the opportunity to start fresh. Of course, though, it’s up to you what you want to do in the end.
Don’t Update Over the Air
When you jailbreak to iOS 8.3, you must first update to iOS 8.3 before you can jailbreak. However, you don’t want to update over the air. Instead, plug your device into your computer and do it through iTunes.
This is because past jailbreaks did not work very well when installing on a device that updated over the air. Therefore, it is best to update via iTunes and you will likely exit without any issues.
Finally, when an iOS 8.3 jailbreak is released, make sure you set aside at least an hour to jailbreak your iPhone or iPad. Most of this time will be devoted to downloading iOS 8.3 only (this is a pretty big update), the actual jailbreak shouldn’t take too long – maybe 10 minutes maximum depending on the method used by the dev team.