It's currently 2025, which means that my June 2023 guide titled "Making the iPod Touch 4th Gen Usable in 2023" guide is a bit outdated. While that video has garnered almost 100,000 views as of writing and has probably helped thousands of people, some of the information in it has grown outdated. So today, I'm going to be making an article on how to jailbreak your iPod touch 4th gens (and all other iOS 6 devices by extension) in 2025.
So what you're going to need is a 30-pin dock connector (no, you don't need an iPod dock, that's just literally what the port is called, confusing right?), your device running iOS 6 and a Mac or PC. So first, there is 2 separate sets of requirements for Windows and macOS. But both require 64-bit computers (who even uses 32-bit computers anymore???):
For Windows, you’re going to install the latest version of iTunes. That’s right, you’re no longer going to have to go through the pain of tracking down an iTunes version from when Steve Jobs was alive. Just make sure you get the one from the website and not the one from the Microsoft Store (link in the description, https://support.apple.com/en-ca/106372) and a Linux Live USB or virtual machine. This isn’t required for jailbreaking, but It will come in handy when you want to side load apps. And, damn they made this very easy. Just grab the version of Aquila for your OS (link in the description, https://ios.cfw.guide/installing-aquila/) and watch it go. Your iPod should now be jailbroken.
ISo the first thing I’d say to download first is Checkmate! Store, which can be acquired by adding the cydia.invoxiplaygames.uk repo, then adding Checkmate Store.
This will allow you to download apps from the App Store… maybe…
This works hit or miss, sometimes you have to spam the download icon. It’s a mess, but it works… I guess…
You’re also going to want to get AppSync Unified, Now, this was down for a long time but there is a different repo for it now. You can get it by adding the repo “repo.kawaiizenbo.me/akemirror”
And make sure to restart the iPod (the Springboard restart it did after the install doesn’t count)
Now, in the past I’d tell you to use iFunBox Classic to side load apps, which for one thing sounds like a Roblox game with a pred problem. But also, it’s very clunky borderline malware, it’s hard to use, it’s filled with porn and the people who developed it don’t really seem to believe in stuff like keeping the domain active or GitHub repos. Good riddance.
So instead we’re going to use LegacyiOSKit to install apps to our iPod touch. Just download it (link in the description, https://github.com/LukeZGD/Legacy-iOS-Kit), and go through the process of getting it running. For Windows, you’ll have to go through the process of installing Linux in a Virtual Machine or making a Linux Bootable USB because LegacyiOSKit is Mac and Linux only. If you’re on Mac, you’ll want to install Xcode Command Line Tools, which can be installed by putting this command into your terminal (also in the description, xcode-select --install)
From there, you can drag restore.sh into your terminal and now you’re in LegacyiOSKit. It’ll install some dependancies then it’s ready to use.
When it’s installed, go to App Management and Install IPA (AppSync), you should be able to select IPA’s and install them directly to the iPod.
I’ll have links below to the game apps that I downloaded to the other iPod in the last video (link in the description, https://archive.org/download/legacyiosapparchive)
There’s also mtmdev.org/webapp that allows you to install a sleuth of period appropriate apps, however it is finicky and its functionality depends entirely on whether the weather is good in Cupertino and you have direct line of sight to Steve Job’s burial site.