What Is The Cydia App Store & How Do You Use It?.
Cydia is an alternative app store for Apple iOS devices. It allows you to find and download apps and content not approved by Apple. To activate the Cydia app store, you need to jailbreak your iOS device. If all of this doesn’t make sense to you, don’t worry. We’re going to take a look at what the Cydia App Store is and how it is used.
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What you need to know about jailbreaking
Apple uses what is often referred to as a “walled garden” to offer third-party content and software on its phones and tablets. You might not know this, but the first iOS device, the iPhone, was released without an app store! It’s hard to imagine today, but back then, supporting a third app was not on their priority list.
The number of apps in the App Store is overwhelming today, and it’s easy to forget that each of these apps must be approved by Apple. Of course, the Google Play Store also has an approval process, but you can get your apps from another store or download them manually. Not so with Apple, which restricts user experience in various ways with its hardware and software.
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The walled garden has both pros and cons, but there are entire classes of applications that Apple simply does not allow on their systems. Video game emulators and virtual machine applications are two examples. You won’t find Bittorrent clients on iOS either. You can install any software you like on an Android device, but the life of an Apple user can feel like a gilded cage.
Hacking, as the name suggests, removes these restrictions. This is usually done by exploiting security vulnerabilities in Apple software. In general, jailbreaking an iOS device is not difficult if you follow a good online guide. However, this is also not what we would call suitable for beginners.
Cydia app store and piracy
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It’s one thing to customize and modify your own devices. It also won’t hurt anyone if you choose to run unapproved homebrew apps on your iOS device. However, the Cydia app store also allows piracy as you can download and use apps that are not copyright protected.
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One of the common reasons people install Cydia is to play iOS games for free or to get useful apps like video editors that can cost you a lot of money. There are no two options: piracy is illegal and deprives application developers of the money needed to write, update, and maintain their applications. So, if you can pay for apps, we strongly recommend that you do so.
Cydia risks
While Cydia certainly gives you freedom of action, freedom comes at a price. In fact, several. First, Apple may not be overly supportive of you bringing a locked device that has been jailbroken and downloaded by software outside of their QC system. Depending on the consumer protection laws in your country, they may have to help you in any way, but you should carefully consider what you can opt out of by jailbreaking your iOS device.
The second major risk is malware Viruses, Trojans, trackers and other troubles are quite possible if you bypass the protection set by Apple. If you download jailbroken or homemade apps to your device, they can be filled with malicious code.
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The next risk might not be what most users consider. This is rather a serious drawback, but it is still worth mentioning. If you use Cydia to pirate apps, you will lose official support from that developer.
In fact, all of the smooth, user-friendly experience that Apple devices are known for loses a significant amount of its luster if you break those limitations. To keep the system and applications up to date, you will have to do a lot more manual work and may have to wait weeks or months to receive updates that need to be hacked first.
How Apple feels about Cydia
As you’d expect, Apple has never been happy with either a jailbreak or alternative stores like Cydia If you use the Cydia app store for piracy, you are definitely wrong both in the company and in relation to the developers of various applications. Don’t wait for Apple support if you mess up your device by going outside if they have approved permissions.
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There has always been a constant arms race between the people at Apple and the people who make it possible to hack and install external applications. With every new iOS update and every new hardware release, Apple is trying to plug the holes uncovered in the latest round of hacks.
How is the Cydia app store used
For obvious reasons, we are not going to publish a step-by-step guide to hacking or instructions for using Cydia Instead, we’ll cover how people use Cydia, how it works in practice, and what it takes to do it.
If that’s what you want, there are tons of tutorials online. As always, you do them at your own risk. Here’s the basic process:
- First, jailbreak your iOS device.
- Then find Cydia on your desktop and tap it.
- First time, it will take some time to download
- Update (“Updateâ€) Cydia if prompted.
- Use Cydia‘s search feature to find apps.
- Install the application as usual
Cydia‘s App Store comes with a variety of “sources” which are app stores. If the applications you need are not in the standard sources, you can add them. This is where piracy issues arise and where Cydia can wash its hands. None of the default sources in this alternative app store support piracy. This is what users themselves add to the picture on an individual level.
Sources can be found by searching Google. They are in the form of a URL (web address) that you copy into the listed Cydia courses.
Should you jailbreak and use Cydia?
We will never tell you what decisions to make, especially if they are informed decisions. Many people jailbreak their iOS devices, use the Cydia app store and are very happy with the results. Do we recommend that most users do this? Absolutely not.
We also strongly advise against going this route with your only mission-critical device. Better to experiment with jailbreak and Cydia on an additional device that you can afford to block. Like an old iPad or iPod Touch.
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Hacking lets you do whatever you want with an iOS device, such as running other operating systems on it, or modifying aspects of the device’s interface that Apple won’t let us touch. Hacking has legitimate applications, just as modifying a game console to allow home software is an important part of how people learn to program or work with computer systems. However, if your only reason for jailbreaking or using an app like Cydia is piracy, we can’t say it’s a good reason at all.
At the end of the day, you have to make your own decisions. Know the risks and benefits, weigh them and decide if you really want to do it. You should also know that there are several Cydia alternatives to choose from.
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