Backup Your Jailbroken Apps

The main problem with jailbreaking your iPhone is that when you update to a new version of iOS or you restore or it, none of your jailbroken apps (aka packages) are kept. This can be pain since then you have to find and download them all over again, and eventually repeat the process when you need to upgrade again. Those days are over as there are apps that will back up all your packages and will then restore them again. Here today, I will be showcasing off two the best package backup apps: AptBackup and PkgBackup.


AptBackup
The first one is called AptBackup and you can get from Cydia simply by searching for “AptBackup”. The app is free and while it doesn’t actually save and backup all your apps, it saves the names of all your packages and puts them onto a text file. It then saves that text file in a location that will automatically be synced whenever you restore or upgrade your iPhone. To perform a backup all you have to do is run AptBackup and you will be prompted at menu with two options “Backup” and “Restore”. Surprisingly, hitting back up will save all your packages to a text file which will be synced once a restore is performed. Clicking restore will retrieve that text file and then will download all the apps that are on the list. It is good to note that you can only perform a restore after you restore you iPhone. So if you were to upgrade your iPhone to a newer version of jailbroken iOS, you would first run AptBackup to backup all your packages. Then after upgrading, you would download AptBackup from Cydia and then it would download all the packages on the list. While it is not the most ideal way to backup all your jailbroken apps, it is a simple and easy way to do it.


PkgBackup
The second app is called PkgBackup and you can also get from Cydia straight from it’s included repositories. Here is the kicker though; its $7.99 that does not fare well against another app that can do the same thing for free. But in its defense it is slightly more advance than AptBackup. Let me explain what it does. Once you download the app from Cydia and run it. From there you will be at the main menu where it shows all your installed packages and lists some other options. From there you can click on the gear to go to setting on configure it some more. You can change whether it backups your apps via address book or Dropbox if you have a Dropbox account. The difference between the two is that it will create an addressbook file that you can sync to iTunes or it will transfer the backup file to your Dropbox account. There also options you can mess with such as automatically backing up your files on startup. Additionally you can specifically select which packages you want backed up and which ones you do not. Once you have everything configured, click on “Backup” and it will back them up. If you selected the address book option, sync your iPhone with iTunes to transfer the backup file. After restoring your iPhone, simply download PkgBackup again, run it and click on “Restore”. They are definitely much more options than AptBackup and it allows for more configuration so in my opinion it is the worth the $8 price tag. However you can decide for yourself if it is really worth. If your someone who regularly backs up their iPhone I think that it is worth the investment.