iOS Escapes the Walled Garden, Lands on Snapdragon: Hackers Jailbreak Reality 🍎➡️📱

Hobbyist developers have booted Apple's iOS operating system onto Android smartphones for the first time, with video demonstrations circulating widely on X. One clip showing iOS 16 running on a Redmi Note 12 has surpassed 2 million views, while another developer posted a build operating on a Nothing 3a. iOS, the software that controls every function on an iPhone from the touchscreen to installed applications, has historically been restricted to Apple's proprietary hardware.

The technical achievement builds on earlier reverse efforts. A project called iDroid enabled early iPhones to boot Android in April 2010, and security firm Corellium later launched Project Sandcastle, which placed Android 10 on iPhones equipped with Apple's A10 chip. The reverse direction, placing iOS on Android silicon, had remained unaccomplished until the current demonstrations surfaced in October 2026.

The closest publicly available code is an open-source project on GitHub called ios-sweet, designed for the Redmi Note 10 Pro. It utilizes XNU, the kernel Apple publishes openly, and patches it to operate on the phone's Qualcomm Snapdragon 732G chip. Unmodified iOS 16.7.16 files from an iPhone X are then layered on top. The project's readme describes it as an "experimental bring-up, not a usable phone OS," noting the device reaches the lock screen, home screen, Control Center and Settings, with touch and buttons responding. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, mobile data, audio and the camera do not function, the gesture to leave an app does nothing, and without a graphics driver the processor renders the screen at roughly 20 to 30 frames per second.

A separate group identifying as OOSexGang claims its HackiOS project runs iOS 16.5 on a Poco X5 Pro using a custom UEFI and the XNU kernel. The researcher sharing the demonstration stated there is no public source code or independent verification. In a newer clip, Safari downloads an Android application file from APKMirror and subsequently fails to open it.