I wanted an old iPhone 6 to stay useful without having to explain how to run a jailbreak every time its battery died. This is the experiment I ended up with: a modified Amethyst app that can run the jailbreak after a reboot and the first unlock, with ReProvision handling app-signature renewal while the phone is jailbroken.
It worked in a cold-boot test on my iPhone 6 running iOS 12.5.8. That is the extent of the hardware claim. I have not tested a fleet of devices, weeks of unattended use, or recovery after the signing certificate has expired.
This is not an untethered jailbreak. The phone still boots into stock iOS. The app needs a valid Apple signature before it can start. The first unlock is still required. Automatic renewal reduces maintenance; it does not remove the seven-day lifetime of a free-account signature.
- The Amethyst changes, as a patch against the exact upstream commit used in the experiment.
- The ReProvision changes for this iOS 12 setup: login compatibility, less sensitive logging, and signing-timer fixes.
- An unsigned Amethyst app overlay and a local IPA assembler in Releases.
- The setup, the failed attempts, and the limits I would want to know before trying this on another phone.
Start with the setup guide. Read how it works before trusting the word “automatic.” The test record separates what happened on the phone from what was only checked on the computer.
The current experimental release is v0.1.0: app overlay, IPA assembler, source patches, and checksums. Read the setup and signing steps before downloading. To compile the changes yourself, use the build guide.
The release overlay contains the modified Amethyst executable, not my Apple-signed IPA. The assembler combines it with an original Amethyst v1.0.3 IPA on your own computer. It refuses a different input file and produces an unsigned IPA for you to sign with your own account.
This keeps my provisioning profile out of the download and avoids republishing the bootstrap and package-manager bundles. There is no shared certificate, signing service, Apple-account login page, or payment involved in this repository.
The ReProvision changes are source patches in this first release. There is no repackaged ReProvision binary here. The full installation is therefore an experimental, hands-on setup, not a one-click installer.
| Component | Recorded configuration |
|---|---|
| Phone | iPhone 6 / iPhone7,2 |
| iOS | 12.5.8 |
| Jailbreak | Amethyst 1.0.3, rootful |
| Automatic launch | Legacy VoIP background launch, then a protected-data/unlock check |
| Renewal | Patched ReProvision Reborn |
| Renewal settings | Check every 2 hours; renew with 3 days remaining; allow Low Power Mode |
| Recovery | Keep the original Amethyst route available; see the setup guide |
Do not install this over a different jailbreak just because its iOS version matches. Get a normal, working Amethyst installation first. Back up the phone and keep a way to recover it manually.
An app installed while jailbroken can look fine and still fail immediately after a stock boot. That sent me down the wrong path more than once. A fake/ad-hoc signature is not a valid stock-iOS signature, and trusting a developer profile does not repair a damaged signature.
The other trap was launch timing. Registering the background work too late let iOS suspend the app before the jailbreak started. The working experiment claims its background time during launch, waits for protected data, then schedules a single attempt for that kernel boot.
There is more detail in troubleshooting, including the signing timer and the USB mistakes worth avoiding.
Amethyst and its exploits are the work of staturnz and the upstream contributors. ReProvision comes from Matchstic and sohsatoh's ReProvision Reborn. Tim Ekl's BootLaunch was a useful reference for the old VoIP startup behavior.
My contribution here is the integration, local changes, testing, and write-up. I used Codex during the work. This is a personal experiment, not an official release from any of those projects.
The Amethyst patch retains the upstream MIT license. The ReProvision patch is AGPL-3.0; see licenses. The documentation and standalone packaging scripts are MIT-licensed. Do not open support requests against upstream projects for this modified setup.
The separate WhatsApp write-up covers the app compatibility work. It is not a prerequisite for this experiment.