In the past few weeks, the jailbreak scene has been revitalized with a burst of progress. After Apple increased the security of their operating system and added new features, the difficulty of jailbreaking iOS devices has gone up, and the demand for a jailbreak has gone down. Still, as long as Apple maintains a restrictive ecosystem, enterprising hackers will do their best to fully unlock the phone and give those who seek it a more fully-featured and less restrictive iOS experience. Jay Freeman, the creator and maintainer of Cydia, has recently confirmed that he’s working on an update to include iOS 11 capabilities – but there’s another player on the field that may beat the updated Cydia to market. A recent announcement has confirmed the development of Installer 5 for iOS 11.
Installer 5 for iOS 11
Those who have been involved with the jailbreaking community will likely recognize the name behind Installer 5 for iOS 11, but the app hasn’t been updated since the move to version 4.0 back in 2011 – when it was developed and maintained by Ripdev and Nullriver.
2011 seems like ages ago at this point, and the jailbreaking arena back then was much more vibrant. With a less secure operating system and a lack of features that drove demand, jailbreaking iOS 4.x.x was a lot easier and added significant functionality to the iPhone. However, the system design – both aesthetically and functionally – is almost completely unrecognizable when compared to the current UI and infrastructure. It’s surprising that Installer 5 for iOS 11 is in development, but in a collaborative jailbreaking community, the more developers working on problems the better.
The decision behind an update to create Installer 5 for iOS 11 apparently arose out of confusion about whether or not Cydia would be updated to support iOS 10 and iOS 11. With Freeman currently pretty far along with the update to Cydia, the usefulness of Installer 5 for iOS 11 is dubious. However, if the program makes it out to the public before Cydia, it will save a lot of time and effort from the rather tedious process involved in jailbreaking an iOS 11 that is our best option at this point in time.
Installer 5 Release Date
The rebuild of Installer 5 for iOS 11 is being handled by Sam Guichelaar and the Infini_Dev team, and there’s currently no word on a specific release date. However, the Installer 5 website promises that the app will be “coming to jailbroken iOS devices on iOS 11 soon.” The website also gives information on what exactly the app will do, as there’s surely a large population that wasn’t an early adopter back with the release for iOS 4.x.x in 2011. Installer 5 “is an open source, free package manager for jailbroken devices on iOS 11 & 11.”
Long story short, Installer 5 for iOS 11 will be an alternative to Cydia that deals with source management, different packages for installation on the device, as well as the ability to manage and update installed packages. The update to Installer won’t completely replace the need for Cydia as it doesn’t offer functionality for packages that depend on Cydia Substrate, but it’s still a welcome addition to the modern jailbreaking scene.
