Jailbreaking for New Members

Interested in jailbreaking your iPod touch, iPhone, or iPad? Head over to our iOS Jailbreak & Cydia section for how-tos, tutorials, help, and more information. Also, don't forget to check out our front page news sections for jailbreaking and Cydia tweaks, themes, and mods.

• What is the purpose of jailbreaking? Jailbreaking allows you to install third-party applications, tweaks, mods, themes, useful utilities, and other content (called "packages") from Cydia, the jailbreak equivalent of the App Store on iOS. Jailbreaking essentially allows for you to further customize and enhance your iOS device beyond the limits that Apple imposes.

• What is the legal status of jailbreaking? Jailbreaking is officially declared as legal in the United States, based on an exemption made to the U.S. Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) allowing for modifications of this nature. Nevertheless, by jailbreaking your iOS device you are violating the End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) with Apple, which means that your device's warranty will be void. By restoring your device back to factory default settings using iTunes, however, all traces of jailbreaking will be removed and your warranty will essentially be valid again.

• Do I need to be running a freshly installed version of iOS to jailbreak? Will my content be erased? You do not need to be running a newly installed copy of iOS, and your device's media and settings will not be affected or removed by the jailbreaking process. Backing up your content to iTunes or iCloud, however, is still recommended as a precautionary measure.

Jailbreaking is hacking your iPod touch. It allows for you to customize your iPod so you can have themes and much more.

I could help you out if you could tell me which firmware you have.

You can find out your firmware version by plugging in your iPod touch into your computer, opening up iTunes and clicking on your iPod touch in iTunes. On the summary tab it will tell you what the firmware version is. It will probably say something like 1.1.4 or 2.2.

It's completely your choice.

But for your warranty as long as you restore before bringing it to Apple they can't even tell.

Good to hear. Glad I could help out.