If you’re a jailbreak enthusiast, you’re probably eager to know when the next iOS jailbreak will drop, especially since iOS 14.5 comes with some features many users want, one of which is the ability to unlock the device while wearing a face mask, and another important feature being the enhanced privacy feature that forces applications to ask before tracking you across multiple websites.

iOS 14.4 to iOS 14.6 jailbreak already exists for many older devices, such as the iPhone X, the iPhone 7 Plus, and the iPhone 8, but if you’re using a newer device as most people do nowadays, read on!

Will we ever have an iOS 14.4 -> iOS 14.6 Jailbreak?

iOS Jailbreaking has always been a cat and mouse game between Apple and the most skilled hackers in the iOS community, and somehow the hackers always managed to clutch a win in this fight. To date, there’s no iOS version that hasn’t been successfully jailbroken, even if much later than the release date.

With this in mind, the next jailbreak is very likely not going to come for iOS 14.4 to iOS 14.6 all at once. It’s simply too big of a range. What I believe we’re going to see is the following timeline:

• iOS 14.4 – 14.4.2 Jailbreak – First
• iOS 14.5 – 14.5.1 Jailbreak – Second
• iOS 14.6 and maybe iOS 14.7 early Beta – Third

A jailbreak to support all at once is possible but would take far more time as we’d have to wait for kernel exploits for as far as iOS 14.6 which is currently the latest signed version. That would mean months of waiting when we could just use the exploits that would get released for iOS 14.5.1 and lower in meantime.

So while a jailbreak will definitely exist, it won’t support all versions at once, most likely.

What do we need for an iOS 14.4 – 14.6 Jailbreak?

Jailbreaks are only possible thanks to kernel exploits, which themselves are only possible thanks to vulnerabilities in the iOS XNU Kernel code. Every time Apple adds a new feature or modifies something in the kernel code, they are prone to adding vulnerabilities.

DID YOU KNOW? Not all kernel vulnerabilities are exploitable for jailbreak purposes. Some vulnerabilities may result in a denial of service (the device would panic and reboot), but may not be useful to control the memory for what we need.

With the A12, A13, and A14 devices (everything newer than iPhone X), things get a bit more complicated than simply exploiting a kernel bug. These devices come with a protective feature called PAC, or Pointer Authentication Codes.

PAC is a pretty hard mechanism to explain, but it boils down to protecting the memory addresses in a way that a big range of conventional exploits would not work. Jailbreaks like Unc0ver and Taurine had to bypass the PAC protection, or avoid it altogether by cleverly crafting the code in a way that wouldn’t mess with PAC (the so-called PACless method Unc0ver uses).

Bottom line: We’d need a good-enough kernel exploit, and possibly a PAC bypass for A12+ devices.

When should we expect an iOS 14.4, iOS 14.5, and iOS 14.6 jailbreak?

As mentioned earlier in this article, when eventually a jailbreak will get released, it will likely not support all versions between iOS 14.4 to iOS 14.6 in a single tool initially.

The security contents published by Apple with the release of iOS 14.5 and iOS 14.6 show a plethora of kernel vulnerabilities that would be pretty useful for jailbreak purposes. It’s very likely that the very first to be released publicly will target iOS 14.4, iOS 14.4.1, and iOS 14.4.2

As such, it’s likely that the nearest jailbreak in sight will be an iOS 14.4.x jailbreak, quickly followed by iOS 14.5.x and only then, months after, iOS 14.6.

iOS 14.6 is really the worst iOS version to be on right now and will take the most time (months) to have a full jailbreak because it’s still signed at the time I am writing this article.

As for the iOS 14.4 and iOS 14.5, these will likely take far less time to have a full jailbreak ready. Exploits for these already started popping in the community.

Unc0ver, Taurine, or PwnMy Jailbreak?

We, at iDevice Central, recommend whichever suits your needs. The fight between jailbreak teams is childish and pointless, and as such, we highly recommend testing whichever jailbreak works better for you and using it.

Unc0ver and Taurine do have a lot of beef between them, mostly because their head developers, Coolstar and Pwn20wnd, are not on good terms. We do, however, strongly believe both Unc0ver Team and Odyssey Team do a great job with their tools and as such we recommend using whatever comes out first, but then also trying the competition when it eventually comes out.

As for PwnMy, it’s a promising project – a jailbreak that you activate directly from Safari on your phone by navigating to a jailbreak.me kind of website. It’s been a long time since we had one of those and I really miss them because they’re very convenient, like really convenient.

No re-signing, no expires, no revokes, no IPA to keep installed, just a simple website to visit and boom, you’re jailbroken.

To pull off this kind of stunt, the Manticore Team needs one more exploit compared to the rest, a WebKit Exploit which thankfully, they have. Such exploit was released for iOS 14.6 and lower only a week ago.

You can read more about the Safari-based PwnMy Jailbreak in this article.

What is the best iOS version to stay on for a jailbreak?

• If you haven’t already updated your device, I would highly recommend sticking to iOS 14.4, iOS 14.4.1, or iOS 14.4.2.
• If you’ve updated to iOS 14.5 or iOS 14.5.1, I would highly suggest staying there because iOS 14.6 is BAD.
• If you’re already on iOS 14.6, a jailbreak WILL come, but it will take its sweet time. Shouldn’t have updated.

The reason I recommend staying on an older version for now, is that you can still update to a newer version later for a limited time.

Thanks to an enterprise-oriented feature in iOS, one can still update to a no longer signed iOS version up to about 90 days from the time it stopped being signed. Unfortunately, this is only possible in the upwards direction, from an old version to a newer one, so no downgrades.

However, this means that if you stay on iOS 14.4 right now and an iOS 14.5.1 jailbreak gets released next week, you can still update to iOS 14.5.1 for a limited time, even if it stopped being signed a long time ago.

Where can I find the latest jailbreak news and releases?

If you wanna stay in touch with the latest iOS 14 jailbreak releases and news, you can keep checking this website periodically, or subscribe to our YouTube channel, iDevice Central. Join the other 135.000 people who stay updated on the latest jailbreak news!

You can also follow me on Twitter where I mostly talk jailbreaking.