Apple stops signing iOS 15.6 RC as FutureRestore issues on iOS 16 spotlight

Due to unfortunate news for the jailbreak community, Apple made the decision to stop signing the iOS 15.6 RC (Release Candidate) late Friday night.

While no official iOS 15 release has been signed in the past few months, the iOS 15.6 RC subscription remained signed until last month, making it a popular downgrade offer for anyone who wanted to wait for a jailbreak release.

Unfortunately, since iOS 15.6 RC is now unsigned, would-be hackers have no choice but to install iOS 16, which currently only jailbreaks devices with A9-A11 chips using the toolpalera1n, which uses the uncorrectable checkm8 bootrom exploit. New devices cannot currently be jailbroken on iOS 16.

In another important note, users of the popular downgrade tool FutureRestore are currently advised not to use the tool until further notice on devices capable of running iOS 16.

PSA first appeared in a comment posted on the Sileo & Odyssey Team Discord channel late at night:

Some of the highlights in PSA include:

– FutureRestore does not currently work when restoring iOS 16, which is not the latest version available.

– If the issue with FutureRestore is resolved, iOS 16 SEP and BB remain incompatible with any versions below 16.0, which will result in activation and/or full boot cycle or restore failures.

– Any attempts in this current non-functional state will result in restore failures. Please don’t try unless you know what you are doing until further notice. You will have to restore the latest version in iTunes if you try and you will most likely lose all/all data you have on the device.

– Devices that were maxed out on iOS 15 (those that can’t be updated to iOS 16 because they’re too old) will continue to work with FutureRestore in terms of SEP and Baseband compatibility.

So what does it all mean? TLDR:

1. Apple is no longer signing the iOS 15.6 RC, which means there is no longer an “official”way to upgrade from iOS 16 to iOS 15.
2. FutureRestore is not functionally stable enough to be used on devices that support iOS 16, but it is safe to use if your device does not support iOS 16, for example if iOS 15 is the latest firmware it can run on.

What do you think of the latest firmware status and FutureRestore dysfunction in iOS 16? Let us know in the comments section below.