How to Protect Your iOS 8 Jailbreak

The iOS 8 jailbreak has been out for about a month now, but even if you already jailbroke your iPhone or iPad, there is still a reason for you to protect that jailbreak and make sure that you don’t lose it.

Thanks to the most recent iOS 8.1.1 update from Apple, Pangu’s iOS 8 jailbreak doesn’t work with this version, and since Apple tries its best to get users to update to the latest versions of iOS, doing so with your jailbroken device will lead to losing the jailbreak.

Obviously, that can’t happen, and while we’re sure that iOS 8.1.1 will be jailbroken eventually at some point, it’s not really worth it to update to iOS 8.1.1 from iOS 8.1 if it means losing your jailbreak, especially since this latest update is extremely minor for those with newer iOS devices.

iOS 8.1.1 mainly just fixes a handful of bugs and improves performance for the older iPhone 4s and the iPad 2, which are the two oldest devices that support iOS 8. Needless to say, this update was crucial for these two devices, seeing as how they both suffered performance wise going from iOS 7 to iOS 8.

For those with newer iPhones or iPads, the iOS 8.1.1 update isn’t as crucial, although there’s no harm in updating to it anyway if you’re not jailbroken and don’t plan on being anytime soon.

However, if you are jailbroken or plan to jailbreak your device soon, here’s how to protect your iPhone or iPad from updating to iOS 8.1.1.

Say No to iTunes

If you’re already jaibroken, the iOS 8 jailbreak is set up in such a way that it prevents your device from checking for a newer iOS update. Normally, you can go to Settings > General > Software Update and download the latest version over-the-air, but the Pangu iOS 8 jailbreak prevents users from doing that on their jailbroken devices, so you’re safe there.

However, if you ever go to plug in your iPhone or iPad into your computer and fire up iTunes, you’ll most likely get a pop-up telling you that there’s a newer version of iOS and that you should install it.

This is where you use those skills that you learned when you were younger when your parents would teach you to say “no” to drugs and other bad stuff, only this time it’s applied to iTunes.

One click of the “Yes” and your iPhone or iPad will be updated to iOS 8.1.1 and you’ll lose your jailbreak, so this is the most important factor as far as protecting your iOS 8 jailbreak on your iPhone or iPad.

Don’t Take Risks

Since you can’t essentially wipe your iPhone or iPad and restore back to the iOS version that you were on, Apple forces you to update to the latest version of iOS whenever you want to restore. This may not seem like a huge deal, but one wrong move could put your iOS device in a bootloop or otherwise soft-brick it, forcing you to restore in order to get it back in working order. Thus, you’ll be forced to update to iOS 8.1.1 and lose your jailbreak.

This is why it’s important to not take risks with certain things on your iPhone or iPad. Don’t open up iFile and start messing around with the system files, as that’s a good way to mess something up on your device.

A great jailbreak app to install is called iLEX RAT. If your jailbroken iPhone or iPad is in trouble, you can use this app to restore your iPhone to a fresh state while still keeping the jailbreak intact. Semi-Restore is another jailbreak tweak that does this as well.

You may be asking, “Why not just go into Settings and select Erase All Content and Settings?” However, doing so on a jailbroken iPhone or iPad will result in a bootloop, for which you’ll have to do a hard restart to get back to the lock screen. The only way to restore your iPhone back to factory settings while keeping the jailbreak intact is to use special software like iLEX RAT or Semi-Restore.