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It's interesting that this can be done, but why would anyone want to run iOS on Android devices? A more desirable outcome would be running a free Android distro like Graphene on Apple hardware. Or indeed just liberating phones controlled by Google by hacking the bootloader and replacing the OS.
This is going to be fun. There are already replica phones for the flagship phones that are running a shitty android version that has been customized to look like iOS. People need to tripple check now when buying older used iPhone models.
I imagine official support for 3rd party app stores might open up some options for easily installing apps. However, that might require the store adding support for this type of iOS install or a newer version of iOS with 3rd party app store support.
>I imagine official support for 3rd party app stores might open up some options for easily installing apps
Given you own the OS, that's not an issue. You can make it pre-jailbroken and load whatever third party app store if you want. The bigger issue is that no app store = no "normie" apps like uber or google maps. I suspect most of the stock apps won't work either because they enforce device attestation on the backend endpoints, so it'll be miserable to use. Note in the maps screenshot, there's nothing behind the modal. It's just blank, suggesting it can't load the map tiles. You'd be better off using an android skinned as ios (possibly vibedcoded) than using this mess.
Happy user of 15.8.8 (05/2026) here. Confirm the lack of many apps but still enough for some users:
- maps, google maps, osm clients...
- whatsapp, discord, telegram...
- bank, raintoday, spotify...
- all iOS default apps!
I'm getting exhausted from all these AI vibe coded projects. Like this is cool, sure, but it's less cool than if someone had figured out how to do it themselves instead of having Claude do it. It's like chasing the dragon but for coding projects.
You chase the dragon by figuring out the problems over potentially a long period of time.
They are figuring out the problems and releasing various levels of POCs in a fraction of the time. It may not all be correct, but with how quick it is, there is plenty of time for refactoring if necessary.
> it's less cool than if someone had figured out how to do it themselves
Those people had 4 years to reverse-engineer iOS 16 on their own terms. I don't think there was any overwhelming technical motivation to spend time on a project like this.
Great work. This is neat kind of like age old there used to be hackintosh for macs. Now for ios. With this do you have access to app store. I think there is a unique identifier that android will lack for it to work.
I hope that continued advancements in AI make it impossible for outfits like Apple to maintain closed systems that lock the device owner out of having any control over their own hardware. We're obviously not there yet -- I'm sure 1000 things won't work on a device with this running, but it's going to be a game of cat and mouse, and mouse is moving a lot faster than cat can now.
> I hope that continued advancements in AI make it impossible for outfits like Apple to maintain closed systems that lock the device owner out of having any control over their own hardware.
Formally verified bootloaders and Secure Boot will make this all but impossible without hardware mods that do voltage glitching. It took 8 years for the checkm8 and usbliter8 exploits to be found, and I think that especially Apple has invested so much money, time and resources into securing their boot chain that the "best" thing we can hope for is a tethered jailbreak allowing a boot into another kernel.
Decompiled and easily available if you know where to look? Sure. Seems likely.
But "Open Source" is a description of the licensing terms, and it ain't gonna be that. Apple will sue hosters into oblivion. It will only be available on pirate sites.
It has an, uh, interesting funding model: “$HACKIOS ON BNB CHAIN
The project has its own community token, live on flap.sh. Each trade carries a 1% fee that supports the team and funds development.”
No, because iPhones still have locked bootloader, and on an Android phone this Frankenstein of an OS is likely to have worse security than just grapheneos.
What, no, why?! Joking but kind of also not, Apple is terrible at software, amazing at hardware, what the people (me) want is the opposite, Android running on Apple hardware :)
Opinions vary quite a bit on that. I imagine the appeal of this is similar to that of hackintoshing: Apple software with the diversity of generic hardware.
Personally speaking as someone who's had to use both platforms in varying capacities in the past decade I do not find myself fond of Android, particularly modern Android. When I booted up an old Android 9 device a few months back I was struck with how much more appeal that version held compared to its contemporary counterpart.
Q: Do the iServices like iCloud, App Store, etc work?
A: No, at least not yet. They possibly require something iOS refers to as the “Legacy FairPlay Key Descrambler” AES (hardware) command.
Hardware is so powerful, that soon we will be able to run anything using anything, if you have access to whatever you need to run, and access is lacking only if it is streaming content from cloud or hardware encrypted.
My “AI is ending the world” feelings are definitely going in another direction in the past few weeks with the reverse engineering, jailbreaking, and porting scene.
Microsoft, Google, Oracle, etc, just invested all their money into a technology that will make their software worthless. As Ronald McDonald once said, I’m lovin’ it.
Was your prior feeling about AI based on the sum total of its negative externalities for society, or its not having produced enough gimmick software projects?
If you think about it, home users will get free MIT licensed clones for Adobe/Autodesk/Solidworks and Microsoft. The companies will just get trained people in their homes for almost free and they will happily pay for support for Adobe/MS et all.
- Optimized and ultra-hardened Office for macros and features? Pay.
- CUDA optimized PS -with inline assembly maybe even from Rust- and more, 24/7 support with a huge Adobe asset pack to start with? Pay.
But it's quite impressive that it works on QEMU, POCO X5 Pro 5G and some Xiaomi devices too.
Website is here: https://hackios-web.vercel.app/en
Source Code: https://github.com/oosexgang/hackios-xnu-kernel
>App Store content and Apple ID sign-in (no Secure Enclave; FairPlay daemon exits)
That seems like a huge roadblock, even if were able to resolve all the driver/OS issues.
Given you own the OS, that's not an issue. You can make it pre-jailbroken and load whatever third party app store if you want. The bigger issue is that no app store = no "normie" apps like uber or google maps. I suspect most of the stock apps won't work either because they enforce device attestation on the backend endpoints, so it'll be miserable to use. Note in the maps screenshot, there's nothing behind the modal. It's just blank, suggesting it can't load the map tiles. You'd be better off using an android skinned as ios (possibly vibedcoded) than using this mess.
>Does not work (yet)
>- Cellular, Bluetooth
>- Charging under our kernel (the phone only discharges)
But this is still a big step for research purposes.
Not to detract from how awesome this is, just curious.
You chase the dragon by figuring out the problems over potentially a long period of time.
They are figuring out the problems and releasing various levels of POCs in a fraction of the time. It may not all be correct, but with how quick it is, there is plenty of time for refactoring if necessary.
Those people had 4 years to reverse-engineer iOS 16 on their own terms. I don't think there was any overwhelming technical motivation to spend time on a project like this.
What a time to be alive!
Formally verified bootloaders and Secure Boot will make this all but impossible without hardware mods that do voltage glitching. It took 8 years for the checkm8 and usbliter8 exploits to be found, and I think that especially Apple has invested so much money, time and resources into securing their boot chain that the "best" thing we can hope for is a tethered jailbreak allowing a boot into another kernel.
But "Open Source" is a description of the licensing terms, and it ain't gonna be that. Apple will sue hosters into oblivion. It will only be available on pirate sites.
Personally speaking as someone who's had to use both platforms in varying capacities in the past decade I do not find myself fond of Android, particularly modern Android. When I booted up an old Android 9 device a few months back I was struck with how much more appeal that version held compared to its contemporary counterpart.
You can’t write something like that and then follow up with
> what the people (me) want is the opposite, Android running on Apple hardware :)
Q: Do the iServices like iCloud, App Store, etc work? A: No, at least not yet. They possibly require something iOS refers to as the “Legacy FairPlay Key Descrambler” AES (hardware) command.
Extremely subtle hint. Well played.
Microsoft, Google, Oracle, etc, just invested all their money into a technology that will make their software worthless. As Ronald McDonald once said, I’m lovin’ it.
- Optimized and ultra-hardened Office for macros and features? Pay.
- CUDA optimized PS -with inline assembly maybe even from Rust- and more, 24/7 support with a huge Adobe asset pack to start with? Pay.