Personally, I don’t fancy iPhones. In as much as they are luxurious, the amount of restrictions they come with typically makes things difficult for mobile tinkerers. Android out of the box, gives users unfettered access to their device and offers a slew of customizations plus new features with improved modded app updates. For you to get this goodies on iPhone, you’d need to be jailbroken. But why go through unstable jailbreaking procedures when you can easily use Saurik’s Cydia Impactor to sideload unofficial apps onto your iPhone?
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I guess you have no answer to this question. In 2013, a developer by the name jay freeman took it upon himself to build an app that will allow users to sideload apps that Apple won’t allow on its App Store. It was dubbed Cydia Impactor and even though it’s still regarded as a work in progress, you’d be surprised to hear that it works without hitch and it’s incredibly versatile. Today, we’ll walk you through on how to download and install it (on Windows and Mac). Then we’ll go further to unravel the step on how to use it to sideload unofficial apps.
Install Cydia Impactor
Before we kick-off, it’s important to let you know that Cydia Impactor as a GUI tool also allows users to install APK files. But for this article, we’ll only focus on how to use Cydia Impactor to sideload modded or unofficial iOS apps. The steps however are the same provided you apply a little technical knowledge. So making sure you’ve installed the latest version of iTunes on your computer, you’ll need to download the Cydia Impactor program for Windows or Mac.
Once that is done, extract the content of the zip file. So if you are using a Windows PC, simply create a folder on your desktop and extract the file to it. For Mac users, double-click the .dmg file to open it, then drag the Cydia impactor icon into your application folder and it’ll be installed automatically.
Download an IPA File
Now that you’ve installed Cydia Impactor, the next step will obviously be to download the IPA file of whichever app you’re trying to sideload. Now you do be wondering what an IPA file is. To clarify, an IPA file is an archive file (like a ZIP file) that stores various iOS apps. There are several sites that offers it in abundant, but we recommend you grab one from iemulators.com I.e if you’re looking to sideload retro game emulators onto your iPhone. Once you have downloaded the IPA file on your PC, simply use a USB cable to connect your iPhone to it.
Run Cydia Impactor
Now ensure to uninstall any legitimate app you are trying to replace on your iPhone, then on Windows, find the impactor.exe program and double-click to launch it. Note; do not open the program as an administrator if asked, as this will disable the click and drag function that’s essential in the upon coming step. Coming to Mac side, you’ll need to launch Impactor, then click open when prompted and you’ll arrive at the app’s home page.
Sideload the IPA File
Upon launching Cydia Impactor, you’d need to make sure that your iOS device is detected at the top drop-down menu. Now find the .ipa file you downloaded on your computer, then click and drag it onto the Cydia Impactor window.
As soon as you do this, you’ll be asked to enter your Apple ID and password. This is necessary in other to trick Apple servers into giving permissions to install the IPA file. So go ahead and login in with your credentials and Impactor will begin the sideloading process. Just sit back, grab a cup of coffee and wait a couple of minutes until it says Complete.
Trust Developer & Run The Sideloaded App
Once Cydia Impactor is done sideloading the ipa file, you can then verify the ‘app icon’ on your iphone. Hope you saw it? If yes, go ahead and unplug your iOS device from your PC, then navigate to the Settings app on your iphone and jump into General followed by Device Management. From there, tap on the Apple ID you used on cydia impactor when sideloading the .ipa file, then click Trust and confirm that you want to trust the app developer.
Once you have trusted the developer, you can then launch the sideloaded app on your iphone and play around with it.