It’s always rough when we’re stuck saying our goodbyes to talent in the jailbreak tweak development community, but unfortunately that’s the news we have for you today.
iOS developer Andreas Henriksson announced in a post shared to /r/jailbreak over the weekend that after seven years of making jailbreak tweaks for the jailbreak community, he’s finally made the tough decision to move on from it.
According to the post, Henriksson’s journey began in 2017. Over the years, he has released a bevy of popular jailbreak tweaks including Lace, NextUp, RoadRunner, SpotifyHistory, SpringArtwork, and others. Henriksson’s efforts in the community made a big impact for a lot of people.
Fast-forward to 2021 and Henriksson found himself working full-time for a major tech company and getting more involved with life activities. It was on or around this time that he struggled to find time for tweak development, and when he did, most issues were on newer devices he didn’t have, and so couldn’t test or develop for those platforms effectively.
Later on, Henriksson’s main device required a repair, resulting in the installed firmware being updated to a non-jailbreakable version. Of course, Apple’s controversial firmware signing shenanigans prevented him from downgrading to and running a jailbreakable firmware, which was a pivoting point that set him over the edge.
Henriksson is by no means spiteful about what happened and is in fact grateful for the jailbreak community and what it empowered him to do. Learning coding is what got him where he is today, and forging friendships with other developers was very precious to him.
As a result of Henriksson’s inability to jailbreak and find time to code on the side, he has decided to make his paid jailbreak tweaks free and open-source at least three of the larger ones: NextUp, RoadRunner, and SpringArtwork so that others may learn from them and keep maintaining them for future iterations of iOS.
Henriksson says that while he doesn’t plan to release any other jailbreak tweaks publicly, he will remain a part of the community, working on personal projects. In the meantime, he’s going to convert a van into a camper and use it for traveling.
While we always experience the melancholy feels when a respected developer leaves the jailbreak community, we also know that personal growth trumps everything. Fortunately, for jailbreakers, the community has acquired a lot of new talent, as jailbreaking is often the springboard (pun intended) for prospective developers who wish to get a foothold in this space as a career.
Are you going to be taking advantage of any of Henriksson’s jailbreak tweaks now that they’re free? Let us know in the comments section down below.
