The Complete Guide to PwnageTool 4.3 (Untethered iOS 4.3.1 Jailbreak)

A very popular tool, which just celebrated its 3rd birthday, is used for jailbreaking devices in a more customizable way. Redsn0w is quick and easy; you simply check off some boxes and you’re jailbroken. However, there’s not much you can do with the jailbreak if you use Redsn0w. That’s where PwnageTool comes in. 

PwnageTool creates custom firmware (.IPSW) files, and you can jailbreak your device by restoring to the custom firmware with iTunes. There are two modes for going about this PwnageTool jailbreak – Expert mode and Simple mode. If you are a fan of customization, expert mode is the way to go. If you are new to this and don’t necessarily want customization, I recommend using Redsn0w, (see tutorial above).

1. As seen below, you must first choose what device you would like to create the custom firmware for.

2. We are going to be doing this in Expert mode, so click on the “Expert mode” button before selecting the device. Once you have selected your device, you will see a “Browse for IPSW” screen. Simply browse for and select the 4.3.1 IPSW file you want to use. Once you have done that, you will see the following screen.

As far as customization goes, you will not need to worry about the General options. The true customization comes from the Cydia packages screen. Once you click on this, click on theDownload packages tab and press the Refresh button.

2. This is great because you can select any package you want to be pre-installed on the device, rather than having to go and install the packages from Cydia after you jailbreak it. If you want to download a package, simply double click on it and it will download. To ensure that it is installed, go to the Select packages tab when you are ready to go and check off the ones you want to have installed.

Almost done! Now, go back to the screen seen below and click build. Then, press the blue arrow in the bottom-right hand corner.

3. Click build and you will see this window:

Save the file as whatever name you’d like, or keep it how it is. Press save, and your custom firmware creation will begin.

Notice: this will take awhile to build. iPhone firmware files nowadays are huge (~600 MB) so please be patient! If you are curious as to what PwnageTool is actually doing to make the new firmware, click the “Log” tab at the top and you can see exactly what is going on!

Once the firmware creation is done, follow the onscreen instructions to put your device into DFU mode. Then, simply restore your device in iTunes with the custom firmware by pressing the “option” or “alt” key on your keyboard and clicking on “Restore.”