Cheyote Jailbreak for iOS 15.0-15.1.1 Officially Canceled as CoolStar Leaves Jailbreak Community

The jailbreak community closed down a bit late on Monday after former Odyssey team member and lead developer CoolStar officially announced the cancellation of the Cheyote jailbreak for iOS and iPadOS 15.0-15.1.1 and that CoolStar is leaving the community for good.

The Odyssey team shared the details on Twitter on Monday night, citing a Tumblr post that CoolStar herself wrote. The post details her decision to leave the jailbreak community and looks at the state of Cheyote, despite CoolStar’s previous comment that a demo will be released by April 2023, which is essentially right now and obviously won’t happen.

The full blog post is cited below for archival reasons:

Leaving the jailbreak community

Around this time last year (March 2022) I updated my primary iPhone to iOS 15.1 hoping to jailbreak it. I fully expected to disappear from the scene after iOS 15.1, but I knew full well that with all the mitigations only iOS 15.0 – 15.1, I might not be able to jailbreak already, so there was a risk.

By that time, I’d already reduced the settings I was using to just two – an iPad dock for the iPhone, and a notched iPhone battery percentage toggle on.

Fast forward to June, and iOS 16 originally introduced battery percentage for notched iPhones, reducing the number of settings I’d like (compared to stock) from 2 to 1. Never mind, I was still on iOS 15.1, and that’s it. I was still hoping to jailbreak, since I had a working terminal at that time.

However, the months passed – June turned into July, and iOS 16 betas approached. Thanks to someone’s donation, I received an M1 Macbook Air to speed up jailbreak development, and a couple of weeks later I received a libhooker with working settings, including on A12 and A13. Jailbreak at that time was in an extremely buggy, although functional state, and there was no hope.

Then came the jailbreak community – back then, without the PAC/PPL bypass, libhooker would have been forced to sign code pages – which was really only doable with the libhooker API (unless a ton of effort was put into possible workarounds). But the tweak developers were generally reluctant to consider using the libhooker API to batch hooks, and I quickly became frustrated. And many other members of the community didn’t help either – I was worried by many jailbreak users on twitter and reddit about this, especially after it was recently revealed that Cheyote was jailbroken on the A15. And of course, since this was August 2022, it’s unlikely that any donations at that point will even get an A15 device on an early version of iOS 15.

At the same time, I developed other interests related to porting Windows to various Chromebooks – my port to AMD Ryzen was going well enough to be a daily driver, and I just got audio working on a Pixel 2 Chromebook (which I had previously abandoned).). in 2017, but then in 2022 I got a new experience).

So I snapped — I realized how much better the Chromebook community is and that I just don’t have to put up with the jailbreak community. And I put Cheyote on the back burner to focus on developing Windows drivers for Chromebooks.

Then August turned into September, November, December. Progress has been made in the Chromebook scene, but every time I thought about going back to the iOS jailbreak, I shuddered at the memory of the haunting.

In December 2022, I returned the money donated to the macbook to the person who donated it. Ever since I realized that Chayote is well off the charts, even if it ever does. In the Chromebook scene, meanwhile, I had 12th Gen Intel audio working.

Then months passed, and in March 2023, I realized that a whole year had passed. And I was still on iOS 15.1, seemingly only to tease myself and skip the battery percentage and widgets – so I updated my main iPhone to iOS 16.3.1 (and now iOS 16.4), knowing that turning No. back and that I will no longer be jailbroken on my main device for a long time, if ever.

This brings us to today. Despite being in denial for months, it has clearly become much easier for me to stay away from the jailbreak community, and I have found new interests that make me happier. So it’s time to say goodbye. All in all, it’s been a good period since I started tweaking iOS 5 (in 2012) and jailbreaking iOS 11 (in 2017) – after all, 10 years isn’t that bad.

==============================

For those who are still waiting for Chayote, unfortunately I won’t be holding my breath anymore. I clearly moved forward a few months ago, although it took me a while to fully grasp it. I appreciate those who have supported me in the past and thank you for your support of my attunements, Elektra, Chimera, Odyssey and Taurine. If you are still running one of the jailbreaks I did, you are the real deal. libhooker and my repositories will still work for iOS 11 through iOS 14 users, and Sileo has been supported by Amy for over a year now. I expect Odyssey and Taurine to no longer require updates given they have been stable for a long time and libhooker 1.6.9 will still be in my repository as it is the last version fully tested prior to iOS. 14.8.1 (on checkm8) and up to iOS 14.

If you were wondering what I’m up to these days, feel free to take just about any Intel Chromebook (or one of the 3 supported Ryzen 3000 Chromebooks) from the last decade and put Windows on it! (Other than the original Pixel 1 [no trackpad/touchscreen] or Samsung Chromebook 3 is rubbish, sorry if you have one)

The Odyssey team also announced final updates for the Chimera jailbreak targeting iOS 12 and Odyssey jailbreak targeting iOS 13. Chimera adds support for iOS 12.5.7 and Odyssey brings the latest version of the Sileo package manager.

CoolStar once led the development of Sileo’s package management app, but now @elihwyma is leading the project, so Sileo isn’t going anywhere anytime soon as it’s the main package manager used by modern jailbreaks.

The Odyssey team’s tweets also reveal that @MasterMike88 and @dhinakg now have exclusive permission to provide iOS 12 kernel patches if something breaks in the End of Life (EOL) Chimera jailbreak.

Now that Cheyote has been officially cancelled, that means people will have to rely on alternative jailbreak solutions that currently exist. This includes the checkm8 based palera1n jailbreak for A9-A11 devices running iOS and iPadOS 15.0-16.x and the upcoming Fugu15 Max (working title) for A12+ devices running iOS and iPadOS 15.0-15.4.1. However, Cheyote’s cancellation won’t affect too many people, especially since the focus of the hack is shifting to iOS and iPadOS 16.

The Odyssey team’s Discord channel will remain open for users to comment and ask questions, and for the Odyssey team to make any important announcements about their projects in the future.

It’s worth noting that CoolStar’s departure from the community was a big blow to her influence and many years of contributions, but that wasn’t a surprise. Her interests constantly shifted from hacking iPhones to working on other projects, something she has spoken about over and over again. However, this should not surprise anyone, even if it causes sad emotions.

Despite the great drama associated with the CoolStar projects and the ensuing disputes with other developers, the fact that her contribution was great cannot be ignored. We all remember the time before the release of Electra for iOS 11, when it seemed like no one was jailbreaking, and then came Electra. Soon after, unc0ver appeared, sparking a fierce competition between unc0ver and Electra Team that lasted for many years, even including Chimera and Odyssey Teams. Things are a little different today, as the unc0ver team has been hung in stereo silence.

The baton is being passed on to the next generation of jailbreak developers, who now have to figure out the ins and outs of Apple’s security mechanisms and find a way to trick Apple phones in the face of departing experienced jailbreak developers. teampalera1n and developers Fugu15 Max and XinaA15. They are already doing a great job and we expect things to go slowly.

What do you think about CoolStar leaving the jailbreak community and canceling Cheyote? Be sure to let us know in the comments section below.