Jailbreaking

The jailbreaking community was spoiled in 2014 with not one, but two jailbreaks for iOS 8. The Pangu Team released the first iOS 8.0 jailbreak tool in October, before the TaiG team shocked everyone by releasing an untethered iOS 8.1.1 jailbreak on Black Friday. The TaiG jailbreak survived one iOS update before Apple finally killed it off today with the release of iOS 8.1.3.

iOS 8.1.3 is only a basic maintenance release to improve performance and stability. The release did not add any new major features, but it did patch the exploits used by the TaiG jailbreak tool, according to the official support page. This of course means anyone with a jailbroken iPhone or iPad should avoid upgrading to iOS 8.1.3 if they want to keep their device jailbroken.

There are seven dynamic wallpapers included with iOS. Despite the fact that Apple releases new stills each year, dynamic wallpapers haven't been updated since their initial launch in iOS 7. This all changes with the theme Dynamics, which adds more animated background options to jailbroken iPhones.

Dynamics requires WinterBoard, and HiddenWallpapers is recommended to provide access to five additional color options. Once installed, to get access to the Dynamics wallpapers the themes must be enabled via Settings -> WinterBoard. After respring, the new dynamic options can be selected from Settings -> Wallpaper.

The iOS Photos app could use a boost. Knowing this, the developer of Photo Organizer has been working for some time to add new features to the stock Photos app. Now those with jailbroken iOS 8 devices can grab the latest version of the tweak, Photo Organizer 8.

Once installed, Photo Organizer 8 has no settings or options to configure. It will simply add new functionality and power to the existing Photos app. For starters, there's a sort option which can organize images by name, size, or date. This is just the beginning of what the tweak offers.

While jailbreaking can bring many benefits, sometimes installing a tweak compromises stability. Removing the offending tweak solves the problem, but the trick is to know which tweak causes the error. The tool CrashReporter can help those with jailbroken devices track down exactly what's causing iOS to crash.

CrashReporter comes in handy when there are many tweaks installed, or when a problem occurs and it's not obvious what is triggering the crash. Once installed, CrashReporter can be configured to send push notifications automatically when a crash is detected. Logs will showcase details related to the crash, including the responsible tweak and its install date.

Mac users can now jailbreak the latest version of iOS thanks to the PP Jailbreak tool. While those with Windows machines have been able to use TaiG to jailbreak iOS 8.1.x since Black Friday, OS X has finally joined the party. Here is a detailed tutorial on how to jailbreak any version of iOS from iOS 8.0 to iOS 8.1.2 with PP Jailbreak on Mac OS X.

First make sure the iOS device (iPhone, iPad or iPod touch) is restored to iOS 8.0 or later. To help prevent problems, do not update OTA using iOS. It is recommended to restore directly to iOS 8.1.2 using the latest version of iTunes on a computer. Those with previously jailbroken devices should backup, then restore to stock iOS 8.1.2 using iTunes. Once the restore is complete, follow these steps to install PP Jailbreak: