Hello fellow Jailbreakers! After iOS 8.1 was released, many of us using GBA4iOS by Riley Testut found that we could no longer use the "date trick" (setting the date back manually by 24 hrs) to trick iOS into allowing us to install this awesome emulator. 
I had pretty much given up until the Pangu jailbreak was released and figured that there may be a way of installing the emulator via SSH. It wasn't very easy to figure out but I found a way to do it and I thought I'd share it with everyone. So here we go!
----Requirements----
Part 1 - Jailbreaking your iOS Device
If you already jailbroke your iOS Device, skip to the next step.
The purpose of this tutorial is to install GBA4iOS on iOS devices running iOS 8.1 or above. If you are on iOS 7 - iOS 8.0.1, the "date trick" still works for you and you do not need to jailbreak your device. Simply set the date back 24 hrs in Settings>General>Date &Time and download the app on http://www.gba4iosapp.com
There are currently 2 methods of jailbreaking: Pangu and TaiG.
- Pangu supports only up to iOS 8.1, I believe, since that is what I am currently on.
- TaiG supports iOS 8 up to 8.1.2, I have not tried this method but others have with no issues.
Before you jailbreak I recommend you do the following:
iOS 8.1 - Download and use either TaiG or Pangu to jailbreak
iOS 8.1.x - Download and use TaiG to jailbreak
Follow the instructions in each program to finish jailbreaking your device. Once jailbroken you should now have a new app called Cydia. Think of Cydia as another "AppStore" but for all the things that Apple doesn't allow. If you're still having issues jailbreaking your device, make sure you followed all my recommendations. If you still can't jailbreak then you may have done an OTA update (updating via Settings>Software Update) and need to restore your device before you can jailbreak it. Restoring a device will always update it to the latest version of iOS available. As of this writing it is iOS 8.1.2. However, that may change and if Apple releases a new update that prevents jailbreaking before you restore you will NO LONGER BE ABLE TO JAILBREAK until a new jailbreak is available. Please make sure you check which version of iOS you are restoring to before proceeding. RESTORING WILL RESET YOUR DEVICE AND ERASE ALL CONTENT AND MEDIA. If you no longer wish to jailbreak, use iTunes to restore your device from the backup you hopefully made before you began.
Part 2 - Installing OpenSSH on your iOS Device
Part 3 - Installing WinSCP/Cyberduck on your computer
Windows user will need to install WinSCP which can be found here
Mac OS X users will need to install Cyberduck which can be found here
Follow the instructions in the prompts during installation. Very straightforward so you shouldn't have any issues.
Part 4 - Downloading GBA4iOS.app
We now want to download the .app file for GBA4iOS. Normally, this is done straight through the iOS device but the reason we're here is because this already isn't possible!
Part 5 - Prepping GBA4iOS.app
As it turns out, we can't just inject the .ipa file straight into the iOS device's filesystem and pray it works because it won't. We need to prep it so iOS can recognize the app properly.
Part 6 - Installing GBA4iOS via SSH
I had pretty much given up until the Pangu jailbreak was released and figured that there may be a way of installing the emulator via SSH. It wasn't very easy to figure out but I found a way to do it and I thought I'd share it with everyone. So here we go!
----Requirements----
- Jailbroken iOS Device running iOS 8.1 or above (iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch)
OR... - Non-jailbroken iOS Device on iOS 8.1 or above (I show you how to jailbreak)
- OpenSSH from Cydia (I will show you how to install)
- GBA4ios.ipa from http://www.gba4iosapp.com (I will explain how to download from PC)
- Windows or Mac Computer
- WinSCP for Windows or Cyberduck for OS X
- Windows and Mac OS X can handle zip files natively but for Windows I used WinRar. Feel free to use any unzipper.
- Both computer and iOS device must be on the same WiFi Network
After you are done, you might want to change the default password for SSH on your iOS Device.
To do so you will need Terminal which comes installed with OS X or this program for Windows: - PuTTY for Windows
Part 1 - Jailbreaking your iOS Device
If you already jailbroke your iOS Device, skip to the next step.
The purpose of this tutorial is to install GBA4iOS on iOS devices running iOS 8.1 or above. If you are on iOS 7 - iOS 8.0.1, the "date trick" still works for you and you do not need to jailbreak your device. Simply set the date back 24 hrs in Settings>General>Date &Time and download the app on http://www.gba4iosapp.com
There are currently 2 methods of jailbreaking: Pangu and TaiG.
- Pangu supports only up to iOS 8.1, I believe, since that is what I am currently on.
- TaiG supports iOS 8 up to 8.1.2, I have not tried this method but others have with no issues.
Before you jailbreak I recommend you do the following:
- Connect to iTunes and create a backup - CLICK HERE FOR INSTRUCTIONS
- Turn off Passcode Lock - Settings>TouchID and Passcode(Passcode)>Turn Passcode Off
- Turn off Find My iPhone - Settings>iCloud>Find My iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch
- Set AutoLock to Never - Settings>General>Auto-Lock
iOS 8.1 - Download and use either TaiG or Pangu to jailbreak
iOS 8.1.x - Download and use TaiG to jailbreak
Follow the instructions in each program to finish jailbreaking your device. Once jailbroken you should now have a new app called Cydia. Think of Cydia as another "AppStore" but for all the things that Apple doesn't allow. If you're still having issues jailbreaking your device, make sure you followed all my recommendations. If you still can't jailbreak then you may have done an OTA update (updating via Settings>Software Update) and need to restore your device before you can jailbreak it. Restoring a device will always update it to the latest version of iOS available. As of this writing it is iOS 8.1.2. However, that may change and if Apple releases a new update that prevents jailbreaking before you restore you will NO LONGER BE ABLE TO JAILBREAK until a new jailbreak is available. Please make sure you check which version of iOS you are restoring to before proceeding. RESTORING WILL RESET YOUR DEVICE AND ERASE ALL CONTENT AND MEDIA. If you no longer wish to jailbreak, use iTunes to restore your device from the backup you hopefully made before you began.
Part 2 - Installing OpenSSH on your iOS Device
- Open Cydia. If this is your first time, it may require your device to restart.
- Tap on the Search tab on the bottom menu.
- Tap on the search bar on the top of the page and type "Open SSH"
- Tap on OpenSSH, tap Install on the top right and then confirm.
Cydia will install OpenSSH as well as OpenSSL which seems to be a dependency. - Tap Reboot/Respring once it's done.
Done!
Part 3 - Installing WinSCP/Cyberduck on your computer
Windows user will need to install WinSCP which can be found here
Mac OS X users will need to install Cyberduck which can be found here
Follow the instructions in the prompts during installation. Very straightforward so you shouldn't have any issues.
Part 4 - Downloading GBA4iOS.app
We now want to download the .app file for GBA4iOS. Normally, this is done straight through the iOS device but the reason we're here is because this already isn't possible!
- Open your browser and visit http://www.gba4iosapp.com/download/
- You may need to scroll down a bit but find the purple download button that says "Download GBA4iOS X.X"
- Right click the button and select "Copy link"/"Copy link address"/"Copy link URL".
- Open a new tab or window and paste the url into the address bar
- Copy the text in the address bar after "...url=" which should start with "https://..." and end with ".plist"
- Paste the new URL in a new tab and hit enter
Depending on your OS or browser something different might happen. For Chrome on Windows, I got a webpage showing me the text of the ".plist" url we just copied. If it downloads it instead of displaying it just open it with a simple text editor like textedit on OS X or notepad on Windows. - Look for the string that ends in ".ipa" and copy it.
- Paste the string in the browser address bar and hit enter.
You should now be downloading a copy of the GBA4iOS .ipa file. Save it somewhere you can easily find it later like the desktop.
Part 5 - Prepping GBA4iOS.app
As it turns out, we can't just inject the .ipa file straight into the iOS device's filesystem and pray it works because it won't. We need to prep it so iOS can recognize the app properly.
- Locate the copy of the ".ipa" file we just downloaded
- Rename the file extension from ".ipa" to ".app.zip"
So instead of "GBA4iOS.ipa" you should now have a zip folder called "GBA4iOS.app.zip" - Unzip the folder in and extract the contents to the desktop
- Open the "Payload" folder that was extracted from the zip file
- Copy the folder inside called "GBA4iOS.app" and paste it to your desktop
Done!
Part 6 - Installing GBA4iOS via SSH
- Open settings on your jailbroken device and open the WiFi tab
- Tap on the blue (i) icon next to the name of the WiFi network the iOS device and computer are using
- Write down the number in the IP Address field
- On your computer, Open WinSCP or Cyberduck
- The hostname will be the IP Address you just wrote down
- By default, the username is "root" and the default password is "alpine"
If you are going to continue using OpenSSH I highly recommend changing the password to avoid any possibility of less-than-friendly people remotely logging into your device over SSH. I'll cover that after the tutorial. If you don't want/need to use OpenSSH then you can go ahead and uninstall it once we're done. Lets move on - Click Login and we should get a message saying asking you if you trust the device. Go ahead and click "Yes".
- We should now have a window with two columns that shows us files and folders on the iOS device as well as on the computer.
- On the iOS column, go up by 1 directory. It should take you to the "/private/var/" directory.
- Open the folder called "stash"
- For me, there were a couple gibberish folder names. Open them one at a time and look for the "Applications" folder. Once you've found it, open it.
- Now we need to drag and drop the "GBA4iOS.app" folder we prepared into the "Applications" folder.
- Once it's done transferring the folder, right click it and click properties.
- In the window that pops up you'll need to change the textbox that says "0755" to "0777"
- Now make sure there is a checkmark in the checkbox next to "Set group, owner and permissions recursively"
- Click OK and close WinSCP.
- Reboot/Respring your iOS Device.
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