Regret Jailbreaking? Here’s How To Unjailbreak Your iOS Device

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Since developer CoolStar released the Electra iOS 11.3.1 jailbreak tool, nearly 160,000 people have liberated their iPhones and iPads from Apple’s walled garden. Many more will attempt to jailbreak in the coming days. The Electra tool has been around for less than a week. Not every jailbreak user is happy with their decision to liberate their device. If you are one of them, you might want to unjailbreak your iOS device and go back to the safety and stability of Apple’s iOS 11 software.

Why do you want to unjailbreak your iOS device?

Apple has repeatedly warned its customers that jailbreaking is a terrible idea. It removes the security layers built into the iOS software and exposes you to hackers and malware. If something goes wrong, you could end up losing your data. Many jailbreak users have the first-hand experience of how it disrupts the normal first-party and third-party services including FaceTime, iCloud, and iMessage.

Unauthorized modifications could also cause irreparable damage to the software. So, when you install a new iOS update on your iPhone or iPad, it could become “permanently inoperable.” You might have faced any of these issues yourself and want to unjailbreak your iOS device. One way to unjailbreak is to update your device to iOS 11.4.1. But if something unexpected had happened during or after the jailbreak, the update might not go as expected.

There is a way to unjailbreak your iOS device without updating to iOS 11.4.1. Before we lay out the detailed steps to get rid of the jailbreak, it’s worth pointing out that the method is aimed at advanced users, and it involves the use of a third-party script. Also, this method will not work if:

  • You’ve used the jailbreak to access and modify system files
  • You’ve updated your iPhone or iPad from iOS 10 using FutureRestore
  • You’ve SSH’d into your device to install a package

Follow these steps to unjailbreak

With that out of the way, it’s time to grab your Mac or PC and unjailbreak your iOS device.

  • Assuming your iPhone or iPad is indeed jailbroken, launch the Cydia app from the home screen
  • Go to the Search area and search for “Subs”. Tap on the Substitute package
  • Uninstall Substitute. It will also remove all the jailbreak tweaks that relied on Substitute
  • Go back to the home screen and launch the Electra app. It should say “Already jailbroken”
  • Relaunch Cydia and search for “OpenSSH.” It should already be installed on your device as part of the jailbreak package. If not, you have to install it
  • Head over to Cyberduck.io on your Mac or PC to download the Cyberduck package. If you are performing the unjailbreak process using a PC, you’ll also have to install PuTTY from Putty.org
  • Download the “Delectra” package from GitHub
  • Now open/unzip the “Delectra” files and drag the unjailbreak.sh file to the desktop
  • Launch Cyberduck that you downloaded earlier, click on the Open Collection and select SFTP from the drop-down
  • You are going to need your jailbroken iPhone or iPad’s IP address to add it in the Server field
  • When prompted for username and password, enter root as username and alpine as password. Now select Connect and then Allow to establish the connection
  • Move the unjailbreak.sh file to the Cyberduck window to copy it to your iOS device
  • If you are performing the unjailbreak on a Mac, launch the Terminal app. Windows users need to launch PuTTY.
  • Type in the following command: ssh [email protected] (where xxx.xxx.x.xx is your iPhone/iPad’s IP address) and hit enter
  • When asked for a password, enter the default password alpine
  • Now enter the command bash /bootstrap/unjailbreak.sh and hit enter and then hit enter again on the warning
  • Wait for the process to complete. Your device will reboot and you’ll get a confirmation in PuTTY / Terminal that you have unjailbroken your device. It will automatically log you out of the SSH session

Congrats! You have finished the process to unjailbreak your iOS device.

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