Run full iOS 16.5 firmware on Android Devices (github.com)
419 pointsby aghuang17 hours ago142 comments
aghuang 16 hours ago
I found the website to be quite nauseating to look at, so I decided to use the GitHub link instead.
But it's quite impressive that it works on QEMU, POCO X5 Pro 5G and some Xiaomi devices too.
Website is here: https://hackios-web.vercel.app/en
Source Code: https://github.com/oosexgang/hackios-xnu-kernel
semolino 16 hours ago
Are those tubal ligation scars on the mascot?
simlevesque 16 hours ago
Thank you.
dpacmittal 15 hours ago
I'm surprised Camera works. Even postmarketOS has difficulty with camera on most devices.
Wowfunhappy 13 hours ago
Is this not your work? If you didn't make it, you should email [email protected] so the mods can remove Show HN from the title. This is a great submission, just not a Show HN.
dang 10 hours ago
Ok, we've un-show-hn'd it and will leave the submission otherwise intact.
jeswin 7 hours ago
This is incredible work. Thanks for letting us know. The really cool thing about this is that it actually works on phones.
TrungNguyen1909's reverse engineering of A13 bionic booted up modern iOS on non apple hardware for the first time. This opened up a viable path to Apple Silicon hackintoshes as well (eventually), and is just inspiring work. That itself was supported by by the work of Martijn de Vos (devos50) on emulating the 1st-gen iPod Touch, winocm on the early 2010s iEmu project for the Apple A4, and the alephsecurity team on the xnu-qemu-arm64 project for virtualizing 64-bit XNU kernels.
I think it continues as Chefkiss inferno and they seem to be close to getting recent iOS to work [3]. I suppose they could make rapid progress with AI now.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBeIW2PDFVk&t=286s
sanid 16 hours ago
This is going to be fun. There are already replica phones for the flagship phones that are running a shitty android version that has been customized to look like iOS. People need to tripple check now when buying older used iPhone models.
gruez 16 hours ago
>Does not work (yet):
>App Store content and Apple ID sign-in (no Secure Enclave; FairPlay daemon exits)
That seems like a huge roadblock, even if were able to resolve all the driver/OS issues.
mshish 15 hours ago
I imagine official support for 3rd party app stores might open up some options for easily installing apps. However, that might require the store adding support for this type of iOS install or a newer version of iOS with 3rd party app store support.
gruez 15 hours ago
>I imagine official support for 3rd party app stores might open up some options for easily installing apps
Given you own the OS, that's not an issue. You can make it pre-jailbroken and load whatever third party app store if you want. The bigger issue is that no app store = no "normie" apps like uber or google maps. I suspect most of the stock apps won't work either because they enforce device attestation on the backend endpoints, so it'll be miserable to use. Note in the maps screenshot, there's nothing behind the modal. It's just blank, suggesting it can't load the map tiles. You'd be better off using an android skinned as ios (possibly vibedcoded) than using this mess.
numpad0 11 hours ago
Someone is going to set up an unofficial app store for this and fill it with pirated and malware-ridden apps. Then some companies will be convinced into releasing .ipsw files for "debug and research" purposes and starts taking subscription through those installs. Then Apple will lose choices but to support randomly downloaded .ipsw files on regular iOS devices to avoid becoming the lesser option against those, and we could slowly crawl back to the code freedom we had in 2006. Or this gets DMCA'd in 3 hours and nothing will come of it.
boston_clone 15 hours ago
also,
>Does not work (yet)
>- Cellular, Bluetooth
>- Charging under our kernel (the phone only discharges)
fennecbutt 11 hours ago
I mean in theory Apple are a company of humans using services offered by other humans to make hardware used by other humans.
What I mean by that is if someone can create a near perfect replica with all the software keys needed and then clone a known serial number or range of serial numbers, when it comes to apple pushing out an OS update, how are they to know which the real devices are and which aren't?
dylan604 10 hours ago
Didn't the legal battle between Apple and Samsung show that Apple would not be very open to a iPhone clone?
fennecbutt 10 hours ago
Are you trying to say that phone clone companies are beholden to laws? Because I can assure you that they are not.
Just like you can still buy fakes rolexes etc lmao.
dylan604 10 hours ago
I'd venture the legal forces that Apple can bring to bear are not in the same ballpark as Rolex. I'd expect Apple to use their influence with US govt to get Customs to stop shipments from coming in. It's not like these devices would be made in the US.
DaSHacka 10 hours ago
But they also don't have to be bought exclusively in the US.
fennecbutt 10 hours ago
Clones/knock offs are already illegal. Doesn't really stop em. Only technology solutions can, until they're broken as well.
schrodinger 3 hours ago
It is definitely not legal to sell counterfeit goods, including imitation Rolex watches: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_Counterfeiting_Act_o...
Even if you disclose to the buyer that it's counterfeit, it's _still_ illegal. You can't just use someone else's name, logo, or protected designs without authorization.
In fact, it's so severe, you can face >= 10 yrs in Federal PMIA prison and owe fines up to $2M — just for the first offense.
varispeed 10 hours ago
They could implement Grapple Store and then clone most popular apps.
driverdan 9 hours ago
Sounds like a huge win to me. Neither of those should be required. Replace Apple's walled garden with open login and open stores.
Guillaume86 9 hours ago
Can’t wait until someone's decide to tackle
Garmin firmwares updates (porting to older or cheaper models what is purely market segmentation and not hardware limitations).
SoKamil 11 hours ago
> It is a research bench, not a ROM: a session lasts a given number of seconds, then the kernel returns to the loader and hands over its log.
I wonder if it is here because Claude would deploy safeguards and not proceed with the project otherwise.
bitpush 11 hours ago
> a session lasts a given number of seconds, then the kernel returns to the loader and hands over its log.
What does this? You can only 'use the device' for x seconds before ..shutting down?
ChocolateGod 6 hours ago
Sometimes a watch dog, if you don't poke the correct thing regularly the system can think there's been a crash.
drnick1 15 hours ago
It's interesting that this can be done, but why would anyone want to run iOS on Android devices? A more desirable outcome would be running a free Android distro like Graphene on Apple hardware. Or indeed just liberating phones controlled by Google by hacking the bootloader and replacing the OS.
bijowo1676 15 hours ago
to finally have a Blue iMessage bubble in your group texts
gruez 15 hours ago
That likely doesn't work because they require device attestation to access imessage. It's what killed beeper mini too.
howunfortunate 12 hours ago
Stolen valor!
ChrisMarshallNY 14 hours ago
For that warm feeling you get, when Apple turns their legal lasers on you.
hkt an hour ago
The cheapest way to heat your home this winter is to accrue so many cease and desist letters you can use them as fuel!
Wowfunhappy 13 hours ago
One thing that occurs to me is this project is a way to get a fully jailbroken iOS. You can tweak the kernel and go nuts. Can't do that on an iPhone.
carlosjobim 12 hours ago
iOS is the best part of an iPhone, just like MacOS is the best part of a Mac. Android phones are cheaper than iPhones, so why not? The Android hardware is quite nice many times.
dylan604 10 hours ago
Is that really true? When Apple came out with the original 2006 MacPro, it was the best computer to run Windows. When the TrashCan came out, there was a specific issue with Resolve that disappeared when booted into Windows. Apple blamed DaVinci, DaVinci blamed Nvidia, Nvidia blamed Apple.
I'm not suggesting I like Windows or anything nonsensical like that, but I'm just suggesting that their hardware is much better than their software.
lloeki 8 hours ago
The Mac Pro 2013 carried an AMD D300/500/700 GPU, not Nvidia.
dylan604 6 hours ago
doh! I so don't think about AMD that I even forget when they are actually used and forget they even exist. But of course it should have felt weird using Apple/Nvidea in the same breath
mayli 10 hours ago
Not really, the hw from apple is much better than android hw, like A18 compare with SG8 or M1 vs x86. the software itself is mostly worst than android.
carlosjobim 9 hours ago
I can give you that, but the fact remains that there are no cheap iPhones you can buy, but there are cheap Android phones. If it becomes possible to easily upgrade your cheap Android phone to iOS, then that would be very pleasant for a lot of people.
UqWBcuFx6NV4r 12 hours ago
You know damn well that different people like different things. Very Brian Griffin comment.
SOLAR_FIELDS 11 hours ago
It’s the quintessential Apple forum response on anything Apple related. Someone posts a legitimate question on some Apple related forum and the stereotypical response from any Apple fanboy is “why would you want to do that? It’s not the Apple (tm) way”
orf 10 hours ago
Having been given an android work phone, I can’t understand why anyone would use this willingly.
The desirable outcome for most people doesn’t seem to be the ability to run android on an iPhone, let’s put it that way.
drnick1 10 hours ago
> Having been given an android work phone, I can’t understand why anyone would use this willingly.
This is probably a commercial Android distro like Samsung's or Google's, filled with OEM crapware. Pure Android is far better than that and is free (freedom to install apps, inspect the source code, etc.) It's basically a Linux distro for smart phones.
orf 10 hours ago
It’s crap, sorry. It’s an inconsistent mess. Having come from iOS it’s as clear as night and day.
It doesn’t really matter to me if there’s some other specific version of Android that fixes some issues if I install it. As a user that’s not something I care about.
drnick1 10 hours ago
> Having come from iOS it’s as clear as night and day.
It's odd because, as someone who daily drives a Pixel with GrapheneOS and also owns an iPhone, my experience is the opposite. You could not pay be to go back to a device controlled by a corporation, and on which I am not allowed to run programs without Apple's blessing. The UI is largely a matter of taste, by now all mobile operating systems have converged to a broadly identical design and similar gestures etc.
genxy 10 hours ago
You guys are talking about different things.
cromka 10 hours ago
I use both, iOS for past 10 years and now Android again.
Both are inconsistent mess.
myaccountonhn an hour ago
As a user too, android works far better for me and I was an Apple user for a few years.
Not having the ugly frosted glass thing is a very big plus.
wwweston 8 hours ago
The most desirable outcome with iPhones is to be able to run an up to date fully-patched iOS on them with up to date apps for as long as the device will function.
The next most desirable outcome is to be able to run another solid/secure/up-to-date mobile OS on them, and it gets more relatively desirable once iOS stops supporting the device.
Klonoar 7 hours ago
They don’t come across as an Apple fanboy; they’re just stating they’d rather have the more private OS on the better hardware.
jeswin 7 hours ago
You're on a website called "hacker" news. Inclined to downvote so that this doesn't take up conversation space.
mrheosuper 5 hours ago
It's not about we should or not, it's about we could or not
zahirbmirza 13 hours ago
There was a time that I would have liked iOS to run on other hardware. These days, it is so clunkly, that the the desire is not there.
nullpoint420 16 hours ago
I'm doing the same thing with my Oneplus 6T, I have Claude piloting my phone over adb booting new candidate kernels and checking the results
What a time to be alive!
dmcrespo 14 hours ago
It seems a bit crazy to me, plus now it opens the door to many iPhone copies... we'll have to be very careful
teaearlgraycold 12 hours ago
No. We should be very bold.
yangm97 11 hours ago
But I wanted to be italic.
tolerance 10 hours ago
Heavy is the head.
schrodinger 3 hours ago
Wrong thread, Rolexes are discussed above.
realusername 11 hours ago
IPhones copies didn't wait this project, some people already have a full iOS reskin of Android which is very close unless you really know what to look for.
ksicmecidkci 11 hours ago
> unless you really know what to look for
I have yet to see a “full iOS reskin of Android” that actually fools anyone with at least one working eye and a normal amount of common sense. These “reskins” are just slightly fancier launchers and they in no conceivable way provide an experience anywhere near close to actual iOS.
realusername 3 hours ago
They absolutely aren't "fancier launchers", they changed absolutely everything, they have the iOS settings, a fake appstore.. have a look on youtube on fake iphones.
nsbdhciebsbdhc an hour ago
They qouldnt convincethe average HN user, bur your saying they wouldn't convince my grandma?
torben-friis 16 hours ago
I wonder, why 16.5? (That would be 2023's versión).
Not to detract from how awesome this is, just curious.
MBCook 16 hours ago
They crank up security every release. Perhaps ones after that were somehow drastically harder?
pmkary 16 hours ago
Someone finally did this, wow! 2026 just keeps getting more crazy.
ivanjermakov 11 hours ago
Maybe tomorrow we get Android running on the iPhone (and Linux on the iPad please).
fsflover 10 hours ago
> and Linux on the iPad please
ivanjermakov 9 hours ago
UTM was almost good enough but the procedure to enable JIT every time you run it was extremely clunky.
HaloZero 6 hours ago
If you can get iOS 16.5 to run on Android, how much more is a stretch to move it to Linux?
1f60c 15 hours ago
There is one, uh, minor drawback:
> Does not work (yet)
>
> Charging under our kernel (the phone only discharges)xandrius 15 hours ago
Single use OS
matneyx 15 hours ago
The burningest of burners
lemoncucumber 12 hours ago
That would be if "the phone only discharges, all at once"
ttul 15 hours ago
Pack it up and go home, everyone. The alpha-release doesn't chart. Time to throw in the towel. /s
ksicmecidkci 11 hours ago
Not even /s can save this one, mate. Poor form.
jgbuddy 16 hours ago
Next; IOS will be decompiled and open source
xp84 15 hours ago
I hope that continued advancements in AI make it impossible for outfits like Apple to maintain closed systems that lock the device owner out of having any control over their own hardware. We're obviously not there yet -- I'm sure 1000 things won't work on a device with this running, but it's going to be a game of cat and mouse, and mouse is moving a lot faster than cat can now.
mschuster91 15 hours ago
> I hope that continued advancements in AI make it impossible for outfits like Apple to maintain closed systems that lock the device owner out of having any control over their own hardware.
Formally verified bootloaders and Secure Boot will make this all but impossible without hardware mods that do voltage glitching. It took 8 years for the checkm8 and usbliter8 exploits to be found, and I think that especially Apple has invested so much money, time and resources into securing their boot chain that the "best" thing we can hope for is a tethered jailbreak allowing a boot into another kernel.
cromka 9 hours ago
It's only a matter of finding exploitative bugs, this already happened before in Apple devices precisely.
j16sdiz 6 hours ago
one click exploit is fun when you trying to jailbreak your phone; it is a nightmare when a random website do that
mschuster91 32 minutes ago
Bugs yes, sure, there will always be bugs. But it already is really, really difficult to get non-privileged code execution access, even harder to achieve tethered root access (i.e. root access that holds until a reboot), and all but impossible to get untethered root access that survives reboots.
compiler-guy 15 hours ago
Decompiled and easily available if you know where to look? Sure. Seems likely.
But "Open Source" is a description of the licensing terms, and it ain't gonna be that. Apple will sue hosters into oblivion. It will only be available on pirate sites.
cromka 9 hours ago
You can use debugger all you want, legally, then write the spec, then reimplement. You just can't look at the code.
We already have nearly a dozen of Adobe and Autodesk knock off apps.
compiler-guy 9 hours ago
Yes. Those are clones or clonish. Not originals. So saying "Autodesk is opensource" isn't correct.
A clone of autodesk may be open source however.
redwall_hp 5 hours ago
It's going to be great, between this and the Adobe totally-not-using-any-decompiled-code-wink clones: people are going to get sued into the ground and LLM code is going to become radioactive to corporate lawyers. Especially when they find out that they also routinely spit out GPL code verbatim.
It's going to be hilarious.
therepanic 13 hours ago
I suppose Anthropic has relaxed its safety checks to such an extent that Claude now agrees to port iOS to Android phones?
Geof25 13 hours ago
ISA - iOS subsystem for Android
nickorlow 13 hours ago
You mean the Android subsystem for iOS?
jrmg 14 hours ago
It has an, uh, interesting funding model: “$HACKIOS ON BNB CHAIN
The project has its own community token, live on flap.sh. Each trade carries a 1% fee that supports the team and funds development.”
rk06 4 hours ago
hmm, if only the reverse could be done. i.e. running android on apple devices. i got an Ipad 8th gen and would love to install lineageOs on it
hollowonepl 16 hours ago
Wow, do I smell the opportunity to have IOS analogy to Graphene OS built on top of such concept?
gruez 16 hours ago
No, because iPhones still have locked bootloader, and on an Android phone this Frankenstein of an OS is likely to have worse security than just grapheneos.
lunar_rover 11 hours ago
GrapheneOS relies on either having access to full upstream support or being the upstream themselves. You get neither with an unofficial port of iOS. So no there isn't an opportunity here unless your threat model has Apple as the sole attacker.
raybb 7 hours ago
Counting down the days until someone gets full linux on old ipads!
dj_io 16 hours ago
Great work. This is neat kind of like age old there used to be hackintosh for macs. Now for ios. With this do you have access to app store. I think there is a unique identifier that android will lack for it to work.
bigwheels 16 hours ago
Why do these demonstrations all stop at iOS 16? What changed with iOS 17?
LoganDark 14 hours ago
Secure Page Table Monitor and Trusted Execution Monitor
runjake 13 hours ago
Important to note that a large percentage of the current versions of A and B-tier iOS apps won't run on an iOS this old.
But this is still a big step for research purposes.
nickorlow 13 hours ago
I wonder how they landed on 16.5
aziaziazi 13 hours ago
Happy user of 15.8.8 (05/2026) here. Confirm the lack of many apps but still enough for some users:
- maps, google maps, osm clients...
- whatsapp, discord, telegram...
- bank, raintoday, spotify...
- all iOS default apps!
busymom0 4 hours ago
iOS developer here. The oldest iOS Apple lets us currently submit apps for is iOS 15. So yea, this version is pretty old for most apps.
tamimio 14 hours ago
Should be called phockintosh! I don’t see a use case for it but cool concept
xchip 14 hours ago
The guy who did it is a genius
occoder 8 hours ago
Maybe iPhake or iPhack?
jgbuddy 16 hours ago
amazing, but who is OO SEX GANG
freedomben 16 hours ago
my guess is a lot of Java people who refuse to get on the functional train
pyaamb 11 hours ago
This is great. Running a virtual OS on your phone is a great way to explore apps without worrying about excess data collection and permissions if done correctly. And iOS apps on android? Brilliant. A few platforms target iOS exclusively or initially due to strategic budgeting.
ksicmecidkci 11 hours ago
That’s… not what’s happening here.
pyaamb 7 hours ago
ah fair enough. Didn't look close enough. Oh well.