Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 11 years and 2 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

Like nearly 4 million other iPhone users, I had been waiting for iOS 6 to be jailbroken for a long time. I’ve had my iPhone 4S for almost a year and have been “stuck” on iOS 5.1.1 since last May because I didn’t want to lose my jailbreak by upgrading to iOS 6. This past Monday, the evad3rs came through and released evasi0n, making it possible to jailbreak Apple’s newest iOS 6.1 release on just about every iDevice available, including the iPhone 5 for the first time.

It was no secret that evasi0n was coming (although initial rumors had it coming out on Super Bowl Sunday) so I was prepared to take the plunge right away: I had a current iTunes backup, used PkgBackup to backup all of my Cydia apps, took screenshots of all my springboard screens and folders, etc. I was ready!

Despite my preparations, I wasn’t prepared for the “Error 6” iTunes threw at me while attempting to upgrade to iOS 6.1. Now my iPhone was stuck in recovery mode! I tried multiple times to kick it out of the recovery loop using TinyUmbrella but was unsuccessful. I had no choice but to do a restore via iTunes, which removed all of my media and apps.

That turned out to be not as bad as I initially feared, though. With a fresh install of iOS 6.1, I restored my iTunes backup. That took a long while as the software copied over 4,400 songs, 104 applications, and various settings back onto my phone, but I was relieved that everything seemed to come back, despite the restore … whew!

Then it was time to jailbreak. As with my previous experiences with JailbreakMe, redsn0w, greenpois0n, and Absinthe, the evasi0n process was quick and painless:

With the jailbreak complete, the next step was to install PkgBackup and restore all my Cydia apps and purchases. Of course, I wasn’t able to really finish that until Tuesday evening when the huge amount of traffic pounding the repository servers died down a bit.

Eventually I was able to run PkgBackup and re-install all of my apps. One thing I hadn’t planned for was confirming that the apps I used were iOS 6 compatible. I had to get rid of MultiCleaner and CustomSiriBackground for that reason. I also took this opportunity to clean up some of the apps I was using, removing some less-used ones and adding new ones. What I finally ended up with was this:

My must-haves:

• biteSMS (free with ads, $7.99 for full license) – supercharged text messaging
• Browser Changer (free) – set Chrome as my default browser
• DataDeposit (free) – back up and transfer app data across devices through Dropbox
• FolderEnhancer ($1.99) – custom folder settings, folders-within-folders, etc.
• NCSettings (free) – common toggles in the notification center
• Nitrous ($0.99) – enable Nitro javascript engine for other browsers
• PkgBackup ($9.99) – backup/restore Cydia applications and settings/configs
• xCon (free) – bypass jailbreak checks

My interface tweaks include:

• AndroidLockXT ($1.49) – Android-style swipe-to-unlock patterns
• BlurriedNCBackground (free) – nice glass/blur effect for notification center
• Icon Renamer (free) – rename app icons on the springboard
• OpenNotifier (free) – more icons in the status bar (missed calls, e-mails, etc.)
• ShowCase (free) – show proper case of letters on keyboard
• SwitcherCleaner (free) – hide apps that aren’t running from the switcher
• WiCarrier (free) – show wireless network name in status bar, tap for IP address
• Winterboard (free) – easy way to theme your device

This time around, I dropped Activator since upon review I found I was only using it for two actions, one of which I hardly ever used (Google voice search via NowNow). I kinda miss being able to turn on my “flashlight” by simply holding the Volume Down button (via SpringFlash) but I figured it wasn’t worth the extra Activator overhead (if there is any) just for that, so now I use the flashlight toggle in NCSettings (which replaced SBSettings). I also had to drop MultiCleaner since it doesn’t support iOS6 which is why I have SwitcherCleaner now. I’m still hanging onto Winterboard only because I love my SlantedLock lockscreen. It’s causing an issue with notifications not appearing on the lockscreen but Saurik is aware of it and hopefully a fix will be forthcoming.

If you’ve been waiting to jailbreak your new iPhone 5, iPad Mini, or other iDevice … now’s the time!