# The day "iOS running on a Redmi" blew up, the only code you could open was this one: how ios-sweet got 1,200 stars · GitHub open-source project

> Source: https://stringers.io/en/github/gh_dipa-studio__ios-sweet.html (Stringers / 什么值得做, generated 2026-11-08)
> Stringers answers one question every day: what small product can one or two people build in a few months and actually make money from. Numbers come from 15 databases we collect daily, each with source and date.
> For agents: these verdicts and the underlying databases (verified revenue, App Store / Google Play charts, ad libraries, GitHub, Product Hunt…) are queryable live over MCP — tools today / hot / products / directions / direction / data. Setup: https://github.com/komako-workshop/stringers (the user logs in at stringers.io → "配置 agent" to get a personal URL). Site index: https://stringers.io/llms.txt

> Oct 18: the video of iOS running on Android went viral on X and TikTok. Other sources only had videos; it was the only one you could open and follow along with code. Decrypt, Android Authority and other press, plus the device ports, all linked to it.

[GitHub open-source project](https://stringers.io/en/github/index.md) · written 11-6

dipa-studio/ios-sweet · dipa-studio

# The day "iOS running on a Redmi" blew up, the only code you could open was this one: how ios-sweet got 1,200 stars

**What it is** : an open-source project that modifies Apple's public iOS kernel to run on a Redmi phone, booting the phone into a real iPhone home screen. You can tap Settings and pull down Control Center, but there's no network, no sound, and no GPU.

**Why it blew up** : in October 18, a video of iOS running on Android went viral on X and TikTok. Other posts only had videos. This was the only one you could open and follow along with the code. Decrypt, Android Authority and others linked to it, and ports for other devices followed.

**C** **How you could follow it** Don't build another "iOS on XX phone"; that problem space is already packed. Copy the playbook: use Claude and Codex to get through a "sounds impossible" low-level port that anyone can grasp at a glance in a few days, and publish reproducible code and a press-release-style README before the topic explodes.

Grade C: the playbook is worth studying, but the window for this topic has passed. HackiOS has more features and more stars, dozens of device ports have followed, and newcomers mostly have 0–100 stars. The bar is also high: only people who understand kernels and drivers can clear it. Already public / widely discussed

Data (updated daily) · Repo created 2026-10-14 · 1,305 stars · 7 days +120

GitHub · stars

Data 2026-10-18 → 2026-11-08 (22 days, 21 observations). Points before 10-28 come from deeply / archive backfill, not every day has one

dipa-studio/ios-sweet ported Apple's open-source XNU kernel to a Redmi Note 10 Pro and booted an unmodified iPhone X system on it. In October 18 it reached the iOS home screen. The same day, "iOS running on an Android phone" blew up on X and TikTok, and this was the only publicly available code anyone could follow. Media and ports all linked to it. 4 days later, the more complete HackiOS was open-sourced and quickly passed it in stars. Below: what it is, where the stars came from, why it was this project, and whether the trend is still worth chasing.

### October 18, 3:30 PM

In the afternoon of October 2026 18, the author wrote a line in the repo's working notes: "🎉🎉 MILESTONE 2026-10-18 ~15:30 local: iOS 16.7 SPRINGBOARD HOME SCREEN ON THE PHONE." A Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro was showing the iPhone home screen, could unlock, open Settings, and pull down Control Center. The long list below logs the patches made that day: HID input, spoofing an iPhone X, touchscreen power, 6 cores…

The repo was only 10-14 old when 10-17 it went public, and the reason in the notes is practical: a public repo gets free GitHub macOS build minutes (the original wording: "repo public for free CI").

The same day, someone posted "iOS 16.7.16 booting on a Snapdragon 732G (Redmi Note 10 Pro)" on Reddit's r/hackintosh with a GitHub link. The r/hackios subreddit was also created that day, and the repo homepage now points there. That night, Makr (@makrotasuss) on X posted a video titled "iOS 16 on redmi note 12" that later reached about 6.4M views and 42k likes. The Redmi Note 12 in his video runs ios-topaz, a fork of ios-sweet.

### What it is

In one sentence: running real iOS on an Android phone, not a reskin. The README's first line is "Apple's iOS 16 running on a Redmi Note 10 Pro."

- **Kernel** : Apple's public xnu-8796 (from the iOS 16 generation), with a series of patches, running on a Snapdragon 732G. Boot goes through Xiaomi's stock bootloader as a temporary boot, without flashing the boot partition.

- **System** : the original iOS 16.7.16 files from iPhone X. launchd, SpringBoard, Settings, and Control Center are all stock.

- **Works** : home screen, lock screen, Control Center, Notification Center, Settings, touchscreen and physical buttons.

- **Doesn't work** : the README is blunt about it. No Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular, sound, or camera, and no GPU, so everything is drawn by the CPU at 20–30 fps. Boot takes about 4 minutes on the Apple logo, and it wipes Android's userdata. The original line: "Experimental bring-up, not a usable phone OS."

It's a demo, not a system you could use daily. But "a few-hundred-dollar Redmi opens iPhone Settings" is instantly understood by anyone.

### How the stars came in, day by day

| Date | Stars | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| 10-17 | — | Made public |
| 10-18 | 37 | Home screen reached; Reddit launch post; Makr's video goes live |
| 10-19 | — | Decrypt publishes, Yahoo Tech republishes; a TikTok Indonesian-language account @dosen_it posts one video with 500k views |
| 10-20 | 417 | TokenPost coverage |
| 10-21 | 656 | Android Authority publishes, using a screenshot from this repo; TikTok @customadventurist posts one video with 1.61M views. Single-day gain of 239, the peak day |
| 10-22 | 828 | PhoneArena coverage; HackiOS releases source |
| 10-23 | 918 | Last push |
| 10-28 | 1,109 |  |
| 11-06 | 1,276 | +7 over the last 135 days, and +7 in the 223 days before that; slowing |

(GitHub daily star counts; there is no daily data before 10-18.)

Everyone who pushed it into the spotlight was someone else: media, repost accounts, and people using it as a base for ports. The author made no content of their own; the dipa-studio account has only 40 followers and the author's other repos have very few stars. Two Hacker News posts got 3 points each and went nowhere.

One number is unusually high: it has 809 forks, which is 64% of its stars, while a typical new repo sits around ten percent. The README explains why: the first step to building the kernel is "Fork the repo (public repos get free macOS minutes)," so anyone who wants to try it has to fork it. Many forks have also been changed to other devices: ios-topaz for Redmi Note 12 (624 stars), Bergamota for Pocophone F1 (133 stars), ios-sailfish for Pixel 1 (88 stars), and also a Xiaomi Pad 5, LG V60, and others.

### Why this one

**1. When the topic blew up, it was the only link you could click.** 10-18 HackiOS's demo (POCO X5 Pro) was also spreading on X at the same time, but it was video only, with no code. The most viral video from Makr was running a port of ios-sweet. Decrypt's 10-19 article spelled it out: "The closest public code is … ios-sweet". If a reporter needed to link something, that was the only option.

**Second, the premise is understood at a glance.** "Turn a Xiaomi into an iPhone" has long been a wish among Android users. On TikTok, a "Redmi Note 10 Pro iOS theme" video can still rack up 410k views. A theme is just a reskin; this was real iOS.

**3. Good device pick.** The Redmi Note 10 Pro is a volume phone in India, Indonesia and Latin America, and its third-party ROM community is big. A TikToker called it "the last truly good global Redmi … a lot of support for custom ROMs". Reposting accounts in Indonesian, Vietnamese and Spanish come with their own audiences.

**4. The README can become the article.** What it can and can't do is laid out in a table, the flashing steps are written out one by one, and every patch and boot parameter is explained. Decrypt, TokenPost and Android Authority's coverage almost maps one-to-one onto the README.

**5. Done in 9 days, thanks to AI agents.** The work notes open with "Agent handoff": "user does buttons, Claude runs commands". The human presses the buttons on the phone, Claude runs the commands. Drivers for touch, power management, multicore boot and activation were handed to Codex, and the repo keeps them as `codex/*/report.md`. That's why it got running before the hype hit, and why dozens of device ports appeared within a week, with others able to follow the same approach using AI.

### Early by 4 days, and only by 4 days

On features, ios-sweet trails two later projects:

| Project | Stars (11-06) | vs ios-sweet |
|---|---|---|
| HackiOS(oosexgang/hakios-xnu-kernel) | 2,514 | POCO X5 Pro / Snapdragon 778G; GPU, Wi-Fi, sound and camera work; boots from RAM without wiping Android. 10-22 released its code and passed it immediately |
| UniXNU | 2,047, +830 in the last 7 days | Takes the generic UEFI route, runs iOS and macOS, not tied to one device, and still growing |
| MakrSas/ios-topaz | 624 | A fork of ios-sweet ported to the Redmi Note 12; took the biggest video traffic |
| Per-device ports | Mostly 0–100 | Pixel, Samsung, OnePlus, Xiaomi tablets, even the Nintendo Switch; more than a dozen standalone repos of this kind have been created since 10-14, totaling about 7,000 stars |
| alephsecurity/xnu-qemu-arm64 | 1,462 | A 2019-year-old project running the iOS kernel in QEMU, not on real hardware |
| corellium/projectsandcastle | 2,125 | The reverse direction: running Android on an iPhone |

(GitHub, 11-06.)

Its only real edge is timing, plus it's genuinely open source and reproducible. That's the whole reason it took off, but that edge only lasted 4 days. After 10-23 the repo stopped updating, and the author shifted focus to the aggregator site hackiosx.dev, which collects the various projects. ios-sweet became the "starting point" of this scene, no longer its main act.

### If it were you

**C: plenty to learn, but this question has passed.** "iOS running on Android" now has HackiOS and UniXNU ahead with broader coverage, followed by dozens of device ports. Another Redmi or Samsung port would most likely land at 0 to 100 stars. What's worth taking away is the approach: use AI agents to chew through a "sounds impossible" low-level port in a few days, so that on the day the topic blows up you already have code people can click into and follow.

**Who it suits** : hardcore developers who know kernels, drivers, bootloaders and reverse engineering and want a project that looks good on a résumé and sticks with peers; people already doing low-level work with Claude Code or Codex who are used to logging the process in notes.

**Who it doesn't suit** : anyone who hasn't touched low-level work (the barrier here is kernel patches and drivers; AI can write them, but you'll be debugging yourself); anyone hoping to earn stars by making another "iOS on XX phone" (the topic is crowded and the base code already exists); anyone who wants steady star growth (projects like this get their stars concentrated in the hype week, and afterward only a dozen or so a day).

**How to do it** : three ways to follow, ranked from best to weakest:

1. **Pick a different topic, copy the approach** : choose an "X running on Y" combination that ordinary people instantly understand and that nobody has made yet, drive it with an AI agent, and write the process up in notes. The topic should be something that can be turned into a 15-second video that makes people want to share it.

2. **Fill a gap in this scene** : each port currently requires unlocking, flashing and wiping data, which is a high bar. A version that runs in QEMU or an emulator with one click, or a cross-device porting tutorial and toolchain, may be more needed than yet another device (inference). Before starting, browse r/hackios to see what people are asking.

3. **Port a new device** : the least effort, but it only takes off if a hit video picks it up (ios-topaz's 624 stars came from a single 6.4M-view video).

Whichever route you take, write the README like this one: a can/can't table, flashing steps you can follow line by line, every patch and parameter explained, and an honest note on what doesn't work yet. Reporters will rewrite it directly.

**How to get users** : publish the code first, then the demo. Launch on the relevant subreddits and on X; run the build on free CI and ask people to fork, which draws participation naturally; for the demo device, pick a volume phone from an emerging market so reposting accounts carry it to Indonesia, Vietnam and Latin America. Don't count on Hacker News: both posts here got only 3 points.

**When it's too late** : this question has already passed its window. The approach itself has no deadline, but the novelty of "AI finished a low-level port in days that used to take months" is fading. The later it gets, the less likely media will give an extra line to "written by AI" (inference).

**What would show you read it wrong** : (1) over the next month or two, a new single-device iOS port reaches 500+ stars without a viral video behind it, which would mean the question still has room and device ports remain worth doing; (2) conversely, on the day the next "X running on Y" AI port publishes its code, no media or reposting accounts follow up, which would mean this kind of topic's impact has been used up by this wave; (3) HackiOS or UniXNU ships one-click install and the star counts of other device ports all stall, which would mean the scene consolidates into one or two large projects and latecomers are left contributing code to them.

[GitHub repo ↗](https://github.com/dipa-studio/ios-sweet)

**Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report**

Competitors

| Name | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from this one |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HackiOS (oosexgang/hakios-xnu-kernel) | Open source | 2026-10-18 demo, 10-22 code released | 2514 stars (11-06). | Device is POCO X5 Pro; GPU (Metal on Adreno), Wi-Fi, sound and camera work; boots from RAM without wiping Android; runs QEMU. Broader features, but its code came 4 days later |
| UniXNU | Open source | 2026-10-19 | 2047 stars, +830 in the last 7 days | Takes the generic UEFI route, runs iOS and macOS, not tied to one device |
| MakrSas/ios-topaz | Open source | 2026-10-18 | 624 stars / 171 forks; the author's X video has about 6.4M views | A fork of ios-sweet ported to the Redmi Note 12 4G; took the biggest social traffic |
| alephsecurity/xnu-qemu-arm64 | Open source | 2019 | 1462 stars | Runs the iOS kernel only in QEMU, not on real hardware |
| corellium/projectsandcastle | Open source | 2020 | 2125 stars | Opposite direction: running Android / Linux on an iPhone |
| Android iOS themes / launchers | Android | Years | A single TikTok iOS-theme video for the Redmi Note 10 Pro with 410k plays | Only changes the look; ios-sweet runs real iOS |

Where users come from

- **Verified** **Reddit r/hackintosh launch post + r/hackios, created the same day** : u/One-Hair875 10-18 posted with a GitHub link; the repo homepage points to the r/hackios post

- **Verified** **Same-day viral video brought the topic (X)** : Makr 10-18 "iOS 16 on redmi note 12" has about 6.4M views; his ios-topaz states it's a port of ios-sweet; the HackiOS demo had no code

- **Verified** **Tech media** : Decrypt / Yahoo 10-19 wrote "the closest public code is ios-sweet"; Android Authority 10-21 (star count peaked that day); PhoneArena 10-22; TokenPost 10-20

- **Verified** **TikTok reposting accounts** : @customadventurist 1.61M plays, @dosen_it 500k, @100dayvibecoding 160k (TikHub)

- **Verified** **README requires forking and building the kernel on free macOS CI** : README step 1 verbatim; fork/star ratio about 64%

- **Verified** **Hacker News** : two posts at 3 points each, neither took off

## dipa-studio/ios-sweet: why it ran

> Research date 2026-11-06. Sources for figures: the data card and our GitHub database (repo_day has daily data from 2026-10-18), the GitHub API (queried live 11-06), and the web pages cited.

### One line

ios-sweet ports Apple's open-source XNU kernel (xnu-8796) to the Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro (sweet / Snapdragon 732G) and runs the **unmodified iPhone X iOS 16.7.16 system** on it, reaching the iOS home screen for the first time 2026-10-18. The idea of "iOS running on an Android phone" suddenly blew up on X, TikTok and tech media from October 18–19, and at that time **the only publicly available, reproducible code was this one** . Media coverage and per-device ports all used it as their base, so it got the first wave of stars. Later HackiOS and UniXNU, with broader features, have since overtaken it in stars.

### Key facts

- Repo created 2026-10-14; 10-17 made public to use free macOS CI (NOTES.md's words: "repo public for free CI"); 10-18 13:32 commit "MILESTONE - SpringBoard home screen on the phone"; 10-23 no new pushes since (GitHub API).

- About 237 commits in total, concentrated in the 9 days from 10-14 to 10-23 (counted via GitHub API pagination).

- Star curve (GitHub database, repo_day): 10-18 37 → 10-20 417 → 10-21 656 (single-day +239, the observed peak) → 10-22 828 → 10-24 980 → 10-28 1109 → 11-06 1276. Last 7 days: +135; the first 7 days: +223; it is cooling. 11-06 GitHub API live check: 1287 stars / 828 forks.

- Fork/star ≈ 64%, well above typical new repos of similar size (the median given in the GitHub database notes is about 11%). Two reasons:
    1. README step 1 requires users to **fork the repo first, then build the kernel on GitHub's free macOS runners** ("Fork the repo (public repos get free macOS minutes)"), so everyone who wants to try it has to fork once;
    2. Many forks were directly converted into ports for other devices, e.g. MakrSas/ios-topaz (Redmi Note 12 4G, 624 stars), ry-diffusion/Bergamota (Pocophone F1,133), joranv1/ios-sailfish (Pixel 1,88), mytiantian001/iPadOS-nabu (Xiaomi tablet 5), ch1tmdgus/ios-v60 (LG V60), and others (GitHub forks API, sorted by stars).

- The dipa-studio account was created 2024-10,40 followers ago; its other few repos have 0–1 stars each. Commits are mainly under the name damjankakak3 (that account was created 2025-06,12 followers ago). They had no known reputation or fan base; the project alone brought it up.

### Timeline: how it got noticed

| Timeline | Event | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| 10-14 | Repo created, boot shim and macOS-runner workflow to build XNU committed | GitHub commits |
| 10-17 | Made public for free CI; Setup.app welcome page shown for the first time | NOTES.md / commits |
| 10-18 | Reached the home screen; u/One-Hair875 posted on r/hackintosh "iOS 16.7.16 booting on a Snapdragon 732G (Redmi Note 10 Pro)" with a GitHub link. The r/hackios subreddit was also created that day (the repo homepage points to the r/hackios post) | Brave search snippet; technetbooks.com 2026-10-19 |
| 10-18 20:47 | Makr (@makrotasuss) posted an X video, "iOS 16 on redmi note 12", **with about 640–6.5M views and 42k likes** . The first sentence of his ios-topaz README is "This is a port of dipa-studio/ios-sweet" | x.com/makrotasuss (Brave summary); github.com/MakrSas/ios-topaz |
| 10-18 | OOSexGang's HackiOS demo (POCO X5 Pro, iOS 16.5) spread on X, but **no code was released** | pasqualepillitteri.it "...but there is no code"; linustechtips 10-19 |
| 10-19 | Decrypt / Yahoo Tech ran "Hackers Are Running Apple's iOS on Android Phones for the First Time," saying "The closest public code is ... ios-sweet"; KuCoin and Bitbase reposted it; @blackorbird shared the GitHub link on X; each of the two HN threads got only 3 points | decrypt.co/381351;tech.yahoo.com;HN Algolia |
| 10-19 | TikTok: @dosen_it (Indonesian) 500k views, 29k likes; @100dayvibecoding (Vietnamese) 160k views; @redmi.note.13.pro683 88k views | TikHub search |
| 10-20 | TokenPost coverage | tokenpost.com/news/technology/35245 |
| 10-21 | Android Authority's "Forget custom ROMs, you can now run iOS on Android phones" used the GitHub / ios-sweet screenshot directly; TikTok @customadventurist **1.61M views, 107k likes** ; X @Techjunkie_Aman about 8000 views. **That day alone added +239 stars, the peak** | androidauthority.com;TikHub;repo_day |
| 10-22 | PhoneArena covered it; HackiOS published its source (oosexgang/hakios-xnu-kernel) | phonearena;moreread.net |
| 10-20–10-23 | The author built an aggregator site, hackiosx.dev, listing HackiOS, ios-sweet and other projects together; discussion keeps pointing to r/hackios | commits;hackiosx.dev |

### Growth channels

- **Community launch posts** : the original r/hackintosh thread, plus r/hackios created the same day (confirmed).

- **Rode the same day's viral video** : Makr's 6.4M-view video (his ios-topaz is a port based on ios-sweet, stated in the README) and HackiOS's no-code demo together turned "iOS on Android" into a hot topic. People who wanted code could only find ios-sweet, and the press framed it that way (confirmed).

- **Secondary press pickup** : Decrypt, Yahoo, Android Authority, PhoneArena, TokenPost, plus tech sites in Indonesian, Vietnamese and Spanish (confirmed).

- **TikTok and X repost accounts** : several videos from hundreds of thousands to 1.6M views (confirmed). These were third parties reposting on their own; I didn't see the authors producing content themselves.

- **README's fork mechanism** : building the kernel requires forking, which pushes fork counts up and makes the project more visible on GitHub (confirmed, README text).

- **Hacker News didn't take off** : each of the two threads got 3 points (confirmed).

- No signs of paid acquisition, star farming, or the author pushing the story. The github repo's suspect flag is empty, and the forks are valid forks.

### Competitors / similar

| Name | Form | Timeline | Scale | How it differs from ios-sweet |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HackiOS(oosexgang/hakios-xnu-kernel) | Open source | 10-18 shows a demo, 10-22 releases code | 2514 stars (11-06, github repo) | Device is POCO X5 Pro / Snapdragon 778G; includes Metal GPU on Adreno, Wi-Fi, audio and camera; boots from RAM without wiping Android; runs in QEMU. More complete, but its code came out 4 days after ios-sweet's and overtook it after release |
| UniXNU/UniXNU | Open source | 10-19 | 2047 stars, +830 in the last 7 days, still climbing | Uses the general UEFI route, runs iOS and macOS, targets all non-Apple ARM64 devices, not tied to one model |
| MakrSas/ios-topaz | Open source (a fork of ios-sweet) | 10-18 | 624 star / 171 fork | Switched to a Redmi Note 12 4G (Snapdragon 685); got the largest video traffic online |
| Forks and ports for other devices (Pixel 1, Mi 9, K20 Pro, Galaxy S8/S9/A51, Nothing 3a, OnePlus 13, Nintendo Switch, etc.) | Open source | After 10-18 | Most have 0–100 stars; 10-14 standalone repos created after the launch with keywords like xnu / hackios have 16 stars combined, about 7000 stars total (excluding forks) | Their base is all ios-sweet, ios-topaz or HackiOS |
| alephsecurity/xnu-qemu-arm64 | Open source | 2019 | 1462 star | Runs the iOS kernel in QEMU, not on real hardware |
| corellium/projectsandcastle | Open source | 2020 | 2125 star | The reverse direction: running Android / Linux on iPhone |
| darlinghq/darling | Open source | 2012 | 13.7k star | A compatibility layer for running macOS programs on Linux, not iOS |
| iOS themes and launchers for Android | Android apps and TikTok tutorials | Years | A TikTok "install iOS 26 theme on Redmi Note 10 Pro" single video with 410k views | It's only a reskin. It shows there's already plenty of demand for "making a Xiaomi look like an iPhone"; ios-sweet delivered real iOS |

### Why this one

1. **The first, and the only, reproducible code released publicly at the time.** 10-17 released, 10-18 reached the home screen. HackiOS only posted a video that day without code, and Makr's video was itself a port of ios-sweet. Decrypt wrote "the closest public code is ios-sweet," so it became the link everyone pointed to.

2. **"Real iOS running on a Redmi" hits hard and is instantly understood.** It uses unmodified iPhone X system software; SpringBoard, Control Center and Settings are all stock. Android users already wanted the iPhone look, and theme videos routinely hit hundreds of thousands of views.

3. **Good device choice.** The Redmi Note 10 Pro (sweet) is a volume seller in international markets with a large third-party ROM community (a TikTok creator called it "the last truly good global Redmi ... a lot of support for custom ROMs," 360k views). Repost accounts in Indonesia, India and Latin America came with built-in audiences.

4. **Well-written README.** It lists what works and what doesn't, step-by-step flashing instructions, and what each patch does. It's honest and easy to follow. Press articles mostly rewrote the README (the content of Decrypt, TokenPost and Android Authority closely matches it).

5. **Fork-based design.** Building the kernel requires forking and using free macOS runners, and since everyone used it as a base for other devices, fork counts reached 64% of stars, which built a strong sense of community participation.

6. **Built in 9 days with AI agents.** NOTES.md opens with "Agent handoff / active work" and says "user does buttons, Claude runs commands," and it includes commands that call Codex (gpt-6.1-sol) to write drivers, plus several `codex/*/report.md` files (RPMh, SMP, touchscreen, activation, etc.). This is why it got ahead of the hype, and why dozens of device ports appeared within a week: others could follow the same AI-assisted process.

### Differentiation

- Compared with HackiOS and UniXNU, ios-sweet **has fewer features** (no GPU, Wi-Fi or audio; userdata must be wiped) and isn't general-purpose (it supports only one device). Its only real edge is **being early, and being genuinely open source and reproducible** .

- That edge is why it took off, but the advantage lasted only a few days: 10-22 HackiOS went open source, had more features, and overtook it on stars (10-24 passed 1000,11-06, reaching 2514); UniXNU's general-purpose route is still growing. After 10-23 ios-sweet stopped updating, and the author shifted focus to the aggregator site hackiosx.dev, so its repo became the "historical starting point."

### How visible it is / how many copy it

- Widely spread: Decrypt, Yahoo Tech, Android Authority and PhoneArena all covered it, and the top TikTok video hit 1.61M views; but it didn't take off on HN. As an open source project, it has no revenue.

- Lots of copycats: MakrSas/ios-topaz, HackiOS (an independent implementation, not a copy), UniXNU, and dozens of device forks (Pixel, Samsung, OnePlus, Xiaomi tablets, Switch...). The niche is already crowded.

### What to borrow

- On the day a topic goes viral, **having public, reproducible code** matters more than who builds the most complete version. Press needs something to link to.

- The README is laid out as "what works / what doesn't + step-by-step tutorial + patch table," which reporters can rewrite directly into articles.

- Running the build on free CI and requiring forks lowered the barrier, and turned forks into a participation metric.

- Picked a device with a large community and strong sales in emerging markets for the demo, so repost accounts came with an audience.

- Using Claude plus Codex for the low-level port reached in a few days progress that used to take months, and the process was recorded in NOTES.md for handoff. The workflow itself is a pattern worth copying.

### Uncertain

- The stargazer timestamp API can't return hourly star sources for this repo before 404,10-18 or on the current day; star curves before 10-18 have no data.

- Couldn't read the upvote and comment counts on the Reddit original post (blocked by 403).

- Didn't verify whether Makr's video linked directly to ios-sweet (whether the caption had a link); only confirmed that the ios-topaz README states the source.

- Didn't verify whether dipa-studio and damjankakak3 are the same person.

This article was written by AI from public data and the data we collect daily. Numbers are sourced, and inferences are labeled.