Newest Breakthrough with Cracking Passes
With the release of SigPass it is now possible to load unsigned, damaged or just forged passes onto iOS 6 and 7.
They never get invalidated or rejected regardless of their cryptographic signature and authority. Additionally to that, this allows everyone to create "signed" passes WITHOUT an Apple Developer account, making room for customization and usability a lot bigger.
You can find out more about how to initialize SigPass and create your own ".pkpass" entries on this site.
More information...
Welcome to the developer central!
Hey there! Welcome to the developer central. We specifically target older versions of iOS here and share our knowledge here. You can find the most up-to-date news about the legacy iOS development scene here, the top community projects and gateways to beginning your development journey.
We offer a wide variety of guides and conveniences aswell as regular dev-blog posts here. Regardless of what you pursue, be it app development or tweak development. If you need more help, feel free to join the bag.xml's community Discord server.
New Must-have Certs for Legacy iOS
As the year passes, and as time in general passes, more and more root certificates of older iOS versions start to expire. In February, two Apple Root Certificates expired within iOS 5 and iOS 6. Furthermore, there's an additional two certificates which in 9 out of 10 times fix any iCloud related issues on iOS 5-10. It even fixes iMessage on OS X.
Please check out https://support.apple.com/en-us/103612 for more information about certificate expiry dates for the future. Also check out Apple's Certificate Authority webpage to always have the most up-to-date trusted root certificates. https://www.apple.com/certificateauthority/
If you'd like to install or download all essential certs, on iOS or OS X, visit the Certificates page or alternatively https://tlsroot.litten.ca
Getting started with Tweak development
Creating tweaks is a very powerful way to modify and enhance your experience on old iOS. An app gives you an unskippable alert? Simple, reverse-engineer it, hook into it and make it not show it that alert anymore. Or, even better, fix things that don't work for you.
This truly gives you the power to do whatever you want on your old iOS device, tap into any app, any framework, anything, and maniplulate it. But of course, you may want to start small first.
What do I need?
The common things needed in order to begin tweak development and to not get stranded are to have at least basic knowledge of Objective-C syntax and be familiar with the programming language overall. If you don't do low-level things, you won't really need any other language for this.
You also need a development environment. Nowadays tweaks can be created relatively easily via Theos. You need a Mac running macOS 10.12 or higher or a Linux machine. Windows is known not to work properly. Simply install Theos, make sure you have Homebrew or MacPorts installed, then just run: bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/theos/theos/master/bin/install-theos)"
The Twitter API Bridge
This is a server that allows you to access Bluesky using the Twitter API format. This allows old twitter clients to be useful again, and gives a way to browse Bluesky using a native app on old devices, without needing to write a custom one. Made by Preloading, available Here
The top community projects of the first quarter of 2025
Here are three of the top community projects of 2025 listed. All of them originated within the bag.xml community server and have been made from the ground up in great group community work. Check out these projects and their respective developers, and if possible, leave them a follow or a donation perhaps.
BlueTweety :: bag.xml, SkyGlow, Preloading
BlueTweety makes using the Twitter API bridge, by Preloading, which recreates old Twitter API endpoints but via BlueSky a lot easier. It also embeds it into the system, ditching the existing Twitter integration with a BlueSky integration now.
Ivy :: bruhdude, Gab, Termy
If you're looking to have more methods of entertainment on your old IOS device the Ivy may perhaps be the best option. Ivy resurrects the dead Vine app, iOS 5 upwards and on old Android versions and allows you to use it to its fullest potential. Check out their guide to get covered.
RetroGram :: Savefade
Another amazing little fix is RetroGram. RetroGram is a private server for almost all major Instagram Versions up until the last iOS 7 version. In early 2024, Instagram ceased to properly work on iOS 6, which inspired the dev, Savefade, to create this project. Download it here.
Guides ::certified by the biggest legacy ios developers.
Do you want to get started with something specific, or just in general? Then you can visit the guide. There are and will be multiple guide posts in the future, regarding everything from basic app development to sophisticated manipulation of system elements via tweaks, and also more specific things, useful things.
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Fixing Game Center on old iOS
This guide will show you ways to fix Game Center and maybe other sign-in impacted areas of iOS.
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Using Passbook on iOS 6
An introduction to the creation and modification of ".pkpass" files, and sideloading them via SigPass.
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2013 iOS Human Interface Guidelines
Get familiar with the Humain Interface Guidelines of iOS from 2013. Particularly from the iOS 6 era. Maybe this can help you learn more about making better era-accurate applications.
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Jailcoder, or AppSync Unified.
This guide shows you two ways of deploying applications to your old iDevice. If you are using Xcode 7 or above, you do not need this tutorial. Just use Xcode with your iOS device normally.
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Want to see the entirity of the guide? Check it out here or in the sidebar under "Guides".
Learning How to Use Xcode 4
One thing I got recommended back when I started was this recorded course from 2011, the CS193P Xcode/Objective-C course from Stanford University. Thanks to this, I was able to get more familiar with Xcode. Be aware though that you need prior Objective-C knowledge before looking at this tutorial. Here's the entire playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD208B806337FCF3F
It may seem long and boring at first but I assure you that this will help you. Follow the examples and also create random experiment projects within Xcode. Experimentation is key to learning, a majority of my knowledge comes from just experimenting with Xcode.
Developer Blog Entries
Here are dev-blog articles. Anyone who has experience can share what they got here. It's truly a limitless space with amazing development adventures or just small helpful things. As time passes this is expected to grow.
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Debug Logging in iOS Objective-C Apps ::by electimon.
So recently I’ve been working on Veteris (My App Store client/server) and YewTube (My YouTube client) and needed a better way to add logging to my apps without...
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Debug Logging in iOS Objective-C Apps (Part 2) ::by electimon.
Hey, it’s me again, sorry for not posting much… Anyway, I recently got fed up with my previous debug logging method and decided to remake it. Before I’d use it like...
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All knowledge base articles can be found here, you can then also request your draft of a knowledge base article to be posted there.
Join the community
Need help with something, or are you looking for a new community to just hang out in?
Besides LegacyJailbreak and iOS Obscura, the biggest servers targeting anything about legacy iOS, there is my server. bag.xml's projects.
In my server you can find anything about my projects, it has channels dedicated to all of them where you can ask for assistance, help, lead regular discussions or pitch new project ideas.
You can join directly by pressing the "Join the Discord" button. Keep in mind that if you're banned the button won't work.
Join the DiscordLike to contribute?
Would you like to contribute to the developer central? Maybe add information, blog posts, guide entries aswell as knowledge base articles?
If you'd like to add posts within the KBA, Blog or Guide range, you can join the Discord server and simply submit them there, we'll validate them and then add them here. If you would like to give advice, correct information here or add information you can contact me (bag.xml) via E-Mail here or DM me via Instagram.