How To Jailbreak iPad Mini running iOS 6.1 using evasi0n on Mac OS X

The iPad mini is a wonderful device and we are sure you agree with us, especially if you are one of the many people that own one. If you don’t own an iPad mini but are considering buying one, you can check our dedicated review here and form your own opinion on whether it is the tablet that you need or not. However, if you own an iPad mini and are accustomed to Jailbreaking your devices in order to benefit of the many advantages that a Jailbreak offers, you are probably aware that until now there was no way to Jailbreak your iOS 6.1 iPad mini Untethered. Yes, until now. Because there is now a way thanks to a new Jailbreak tool so get ready to bring the Jailbreak experience to your iPad mini running iOS 6.1.

The tool that will allow you the Untethered Jailbreak for your iOS 6.1 iPad mini is called evasi0n. The recently formed team named evad3rs, released the evasi0n Jailbreak tool at the beginning of February, on Sunday the 3rd. Evasi0n is one of the most anticipated Jailbreak tools from the first months of 2013, as it gives users a way to Jailbreak their iPad mini with ease. Of course, we have a step by step ‘how to‘ guide ready for you with precise instructions on Jailbreaking your favorite tablet that runs iOS 6.1.

Before we begin with the actual guide, a few words about the newly released Jailbreak tool Evasi0n. First of all, it is important to mention that the tool will work with any of the vast majority of iOS devices and all iOS 6 versions released so far, so it works with iOS 6.0 , iOS 6.0.1, iOS 6.0.2 and also with iOS 6.1. Of all the supported devices, we are interested in the iPad mini so regardless of what iOS 6 version you have on your tablet, it is supported by the Jailbreak tool.

For the Jailbreak process, you will need a few things that we will mention here. Before that, we should also say that the evad3rs team developed their Jailbreak tool for a variety of platforms with the purpose of making it easy for anyone to Jailbreak their iPad mini running iOS 6.1. This means that you will find the tool available for the Mac OS X, for the Windows Operating System and for the Linux Operating System and that pretty much covers every user under the sun. Now let us enumerate the requirements for the Jailbreak process: first of all you will of course need an iPad mini running iOS 6.1 (though the Evasi0n tool supports either iOS 6.0 , iOS 6.0.1, iOS 6.0.2 or iOS 6.1 firmware versions); a desktop computer running one of the aforementioned Operating Systems (please note that for the Windows OS, the minimum recommended version is XP,  for the Mac OS X you will need 10.6 minimum and for the Linux OS you need x86 / x86_64); finally, the last requirement is an USB cable to connect your iPad mini to your the desktop computer. This step by step ‘how to‘ guide is for the Mac OS X version of the Evasi0n Jailbreak tool so you will need to have Mac OS X.

Step 1.

The first step shouldn’t represent a surprise. The first thing you will need to do is, of course, to download the Evasi0n Jailbreak tool on your desktop computer. As this guide applies to the Mac OS X version of the tool, be sure to download the Mac version. You can find Evasi0n on our Jailbreak tools download page. Once the download is finished, you should extract the archive to a location on your computer.

Step 2.

The next step is to open the Evasi0n tool. In order to open it, you will have to navigate to the location where you extracted the Evasi0n archive and launch it by double clicking on the extracted file.

Step 3.

This step is an additional step. In case your iPad mini has a Passcode enabled, you will need to disable it. To do so, unlock your iPad mini and navigate to Settings, from there to General and finally to Passcode Lock. Here you need to choose Turn Passcode Off in order to continue with the Jailbreak process.

Step 4.

You are now ready to connect your iOS 6.1 iPad mini to your desktop computer. You will have to use the USB cable to connect your iPad mini to the desktop computer.

Step 5.

You should now see a screen that informs you the tool detected your iPad mini. The message should be along these lines: “iPad mini with iOS 6.1 detected. Click the button to begin“. The button you need to press in order to begin is the Jailbreak button but please note that you won’t be able to press the Jailbreak button unless the Evasi0n Jailbreak tool detected your iPad mini correctly. Another thing you will be informed of on this screen is that you should backup your iPad mini before starting the Jailbreak process. The chance of any kind of risk and data loss is low (we never had any problems) but in case something like that happens, it is better to be on the safe side and be able to recover your data.

Step 6.

Once your iPad mini is detected and you are ready to begin the Jailbreak process, go ahead and press the Jailbreak button at which point the evasi0n tool will start preparing jailbreak data.

Step 7.

During this step the evasi0n tool will execute a number of automatic steps of which ‘preparing jailbreak data‘ that we mentioned above is the first. After the ‘preparing jailbreak data‘ step, evasi0n will start ‘injecting jailbreak data‘, then it will reboot your iPad mini. After the reboot, evasi0n will start ‘uploading Cydia‘ and when that step is complete it will start ‘uploading the Cydia packages list‘. All these steps will require some time to complete so try to be patient and do not try to use your desktop computer during the execution of these steps.

Step 8.

After the Evasi0n tool completes all the steps that we enumerated above, you will see a screen with several instructions. What you should do is: first unlock your iPad mini and once it is unlocked search for a newly created icon on your Home screen. It should be called “Jailbreak”. Tap this icon only once (it is very important to tap on it JUST ONCE). After you tap the newly created icon, the screen will quickly go black and after that return to the Home screen again.

Step 9.

In this step Evasi0n will continue executing a few more automatic steps such as ‘injecting jailbreak data‘ and ‘Root Filesystem successfully remounted!‘. Again, we stress that it is important to be patient and you should not use your desktop computer for any other activities during the execution of these steps.

Step 10.

After the Evasi0n tool completes these steps too, you will see a screen that lets you know the process is “Done“. The message should be this: “Done! Device will now reboot. Please be patient, the boot will take a bit longer than usual to do a first time setup. The device may restart several times“. So once your iPad mini reboots, take a small brake from your desktop computer until the Evasi0n Jailbreak tool does a first time setup and don’t worry about the unusually long boot time, or if your iPad mini restarts several times. As the program tells you that is normal and part of the Jailbreak process.

Step 11.

After Evasi0n completes the first time setup, your iPad mini should display the logo of the ‘Evasi0n’ tool over a white background. You will also see a lot of messages popping up; these will be very short and they are meant to inform you of what the Evasi0n tool is doing at the time. The messages should be ‘Setting up fstab and AFC2‘, ‘Setting up Cydia‘, ‘Setting up Cydia packages‘, ‘Clearing SpringBoard Cache‘ and finally ‘Rebooting‘. After these very short messages your iPad mini will reboot (as announced by the last message) and this will be the last reboot of the Jailbreak process.

After your iPad mini reboots, you will again see the Evasi0n logo over a white background and a new set of messages will appear for a (very) short period of time, informing you of the various tasks that Evasi0n is doing. This time the messages you will see are ‘Initializing offsets‘, ‘Finding offsets‘, ‘Patching kernel‘, ‘Cleaning up!’ and the last one will be ‘Done! Continuing boot‘. After the last message, the Jailbreak process is complete and your iPad mini should display the Lock screen.

Step 12.

This is the last step and it is very easy (not that the steps before were hard). All you have to do now is unlock your iPad mini, and navigate to the second (or third, if you have a lot of Apps) page of your Home screen where you will find Cydia. Tap on the icon to open it. Since this will be the first time you launch Cydia, there will be a setup – Cydia will initialize and this process might last a couple of minutes. After it is done initializing, you will be taken to the Lock screen for the last time during the Jailbreak process. Again, unlock your iPad mini and launch Cydia. Now the only thing remaining is to select the user type that you want and it is all done. You are now the owner of an untethered Jailbroken iPad mini. There are a few additional notes and observations below so make sure to read them and enjoy your Jailbroken iPad mini!

Notes:

If your iPad mini had a Passcode enabled prior to beginning the Jailbreak process and you disabled the Passcode during step three, please enable the Passcode again once you have successfully Jailbroken your iPad mini. Another thing to note is that, as we already mentioned before beginning the ‘how to‘ guide, we wrote these instructions for the Mac OS X version of Evasi0n. The guides for the Windows and Linux Operating Systems are not covered in this article, but are similar to this one.

Thanks to the wonderful evad3rs team you are now the owner of a Jailbroken iPad mini. That means that you now have access to a large number of tweaks so we recommend searching our site for some of the best Jailbreak tweaks available for your tablet of choice. If you have any comments or suggestions, you can use the comments section below.