Browse 157,000 archived iOS apps from 2008–2014 and install them on your jailbroken device, with built-in AI search.
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- iOS 5.0 – 10.x (armv7 / 32-bit) — fully supported and tested on iPad 1 (iOS 5.1.1), iPad 4 (iOS 6.1.3), iPad mini 2 (iOS 10.3.3).
- iOS 11+ — not supported. The binary is 32-bit only and Apple dropped 32-bit app support in iOS 11.
- Compatible devices: iPad 1, iPhone 3GS / 4 / 4S, iPad 2 / 3 / 4 / iPad mini, iPod touch 3 / 4 / 5 (and 64-bit devices like iPad Air / iPhone 5S running iOS 10.3.3 or lower).
- Requires a jailbreak — that's it. Cydia handles the rest.
- 157k vintage app catalog bundled in the IPA — works offline once installed
- AI search — describe an app in any language, the LLM finds it for you
- 7 languages — EN / FR / ES / DE / PT‑BR / JA / ZH‑Hans, auto-detected from your device
- Multi-select install — queue up dozens of apps in one batch
- Cancellable downloads with live progress
- Skeuomorphic iOS 6 UI — fits naturally into your jailbroken device
- No backend, no account, no tracking — talks directly to archive.org and pollinations.ai
From v1.5 onwards, AppDrop is distributed exclusively via Cydia. No more manual IPA transfer, no SSH, no file manager. Cydia handles everything — including the two required dependencies (AppSync Unified, IPA Installer Console).
If you previously installed AppDrop via the .ipa flow (from a v1.4-or-earlier GitHub release), remove that copy before adding the Cydia source:
- On your home screen, long-press the AppDrop icon until it wiggles → tap the × → Delete
Why: the IPA install lives at /var/mobile/Containers/Bundle/Application/<UUID>/IPAInstaller.app/ while the Cydia install lives at /Applications/IPAInstaller.app/. If you leave the old one behind, you can end up with two icons or a confused SpringBoard. Your downloaded apps + settings stay in their own container — they're not lost when you delete the bundle.
- Open Cydia on your jailbroken device
- Go to Sources → Edit → Add
- Enter this URL:
https://adrienrl1.github.io/cydia/ - Tap Add Source — Cydia refreshes the source list. The repo is named AdrienRL.
- From the AdrienRL source, tap AppDrop
- Tap Install → Confirm
Cydia automatically pulls and installs the two prerequisite packages if you don't have them already:
- AppSync Unified by Karen — lets the system load unsigned IPAs
- IPA Installer Console by autopear — the actual install tool AppDrop drives under the hood
When the install finishes, AppDrop appears on your home screen. Tap it and you're done.
The AppDrop repo keeps every past release. From the package page, tap Modify → you can pick among v1.4, v1.4-5, v1.5, or the latest revision. Useful if a new release regresses something for your specific device.
AppDrop's in-app updater checks GitHub Releases hourly and, when a new version is out, opens Cydia directly on the package page so you can tap Upgrade in one tap. No download flow inside the app.
| Symptom | Fix |
|---|---|
| Cydia can't resolve AppSync Unified | Add Karen's repo: https://cydia.akemi.ai/, then refresh. |
| Icon not visible after install | Reboot the device, or via SSH run uicache -p /Applications/IPAInstaller.app && killall -9 SpringBoard. |
| App crashes on launch | Confirm your iOS is 5.0 or newer (iOS 11+ is not supported). |
| Dependencies marked as "broken" | Refresh all your sources, then try Install again. |
Browse all 157,000 archived apps. Tap Filters to narrow by iOS version, device, or sort order. Tap Select to enter multi-pick mode for batch installs.
Tap the AI Chat tab and describe an app in plain language — any of the 7 supported languages works. The LLM identifies vintage titles (Real Racing 3, Asphalt 6, NFS, etc.) and shows them as tappable install cards.
The Search tab lets you find apps by name in real time across all 157k entries — debounce is 150 ms so results stream in as you type. Each row shows the version, minimum iOS, file size and the actual .ipa filename so you can pick the right mirror. Tap a row to open the detail screen and install.
Narrow the catalog by minimum / maximum iOS version, device class (iPhone, iPad, both), uniqueness (one row per bundle ID), and sort order. Tap a sort row again to flip ascending / descending.
Catalog metadata : stuffed18.github.io/ipa-archive-updated
↓ pre-built SQLite bundled in the IPA
AI search : text.pollinations.ai (anonymous, no key)
↓ returns app titles + keywords
IPA download : http://archive.org/download/X/Y.ipa
↓ archive.org → CDN redirect → mbedTLS-bundled HTTPS
Local install : /usr/bin/ipainstaller path/to/Y.ipa
↓
App on home screen ✓
AppDrop downgrades archive.org requests from https:// to http:// to bypass Fastly's JA3-fingerprint blocking on old TLS clients. The CDN node then redirects to HTTPS, and the bundled mbedTLS handles the Let's Encrypt handshake on iOS 6 where the system TLS stack is too old.
Requires the Theos cross-compile toolchain on macOS.
git clone https://github.com/AdrienRL1/AppDrop.git
cd AppDrop
export THEOS=$HOME/theos
# One-time: build mbedTLS for armv7 (or use the prebuilt libs in deps/build/)
cd deps && bash build-mbedtls-ios.sh && cd ..
# Build the .ipa and deploy directly to a jailbroken device via SSH
IPAD_IP=192.168.x.x bash build-install.shThe build script needs sshpass (Homebrew: brew install hudochenkov/sshpass/sshpass) and SSH access (root / alpine by default) to a jailbroken iOS 6+ device.
| Layer | Technology |
|---|---|
| UI | Objective-C, UIKit, custom drawRect: skeuomorphic widgets |
| Networking | Bundled mbedTLS (TLS 1.2) on raw sockets — iOS 6 system TLS can't handshake modern servers |
| Catalog DB | SQLite (system libsqlite3) |
| AI | Pollinations.ai (GPT-OSS 20B) with a vintage-iOS expert system prompt |
| Install | posix_spawn → /usr/bin/ipainstaller |
| i18n | NSBundle .lproj × 7 langs |
| Build | Theos (clang armv7) |
AppDrop runs no analytics, has no account system, sends no telemetry. See PRIVACY.md for the full list of third-party services contacted at runtime.
MIT License — use it, modify it, fork it.
- stuffed18 — public IPA catalog metadata at github.com/stuffed18/ipa-archive-updated
- archive.org — hosting the actual IPA files
- Pollinations.ai — free anonymous LLM endpoint
- mbedTLS — Apache-2.0 TLS library that made HTTPS work on iOS 6
- autopear —
ipainstaller, the helper AppDrop delegates to
AppDrop is a client for publicly-listed archive.org content. The app downloads files that are already available to anyone with a browser. It does not redistribute or host any IPAs itself. Use responsibly — only install software you own or that is freely redistributable (free, archived, homebrew).