Learn How To Hack Your iPod Nano 6G [Remove Apps And Add Blank Spaces]

A Couple of days ago we told you that the first step in jailbreaking the iPod Nano, was carried out by a hacker who goes by the name of @jwhelton. Unfortunately this hack was over publicized and a lot of people think that the iPod Nano is just steps away from being jailbroken. This unfortunately is not the case, as what @jwhelton discovered was a simple hack that allows you to create blank spaces on your iPod Nano’s SpringBoard. This is carried out simply by editing the springboard.plist file on the iPod Nano, and while this is a small/somewhat useless hack, it shows that booting with a user modded file is possible (This is the first step to being jailbroken).

Today, @jwhelton has updated his blog to include a tutorial on how to perform this simple hack yourself.  Before we point you to the tutorial however, please read this warning from jwhelton, as it is important to fully understand this hack.

Jailbreaking real possibility: The hack and things I’ve been playing around with and have done use the already available ‘disk use’ of the device. The hack is simple, like Forrest Gump simple, the importance is that it got the Nano hack got attention and thankfully attracted some kickass hackers and developers who wish to work on it with me, I’m gonna be doing all I can to facilitate this. iPod Nano hacking is nothing new (http://ipodlinuxinstl.sourceforge.net/). If I am correct and it is a rehashed version, then there’ll be a few bugs and pre-existing code can be used to hack it.

Introducing the SyncTug: The SyncTug is the process of hard-rebooting the iPod Nano (by holding down the minus volume button and lock button at the same time) and as soon as it begins to reboot (screen flashes black for a moment), you unplug the iPod cable from it. See normally when a user edits a file and disconnects the Nano, the Nano compares the modded file to its current cache and reverts the modded file to its original state, thus removing any mod. By SyncTugging it, the Nano is forced to boot using this modded file, bypassing this cache comparison. Its simple, but it works! Using this, one could edit the Icon State plist to reveal hidden icons!

The Fear: My own fear is that people have over hyped a simple hack I did to remove icons, however this ‘hype’, as mentioned, allowed better devs and hackers to contact me. I plan on learning a lot on this hacking trip and do some serious stuff, this silly hack is a starting point.

If you read the quoted text above, you will realize that it is just emphasis on what we told you above. Now, that we have gotten that out of the way we will share with you the video tutorial on how to perform this hack on your iPod Nano.

Note: If you would like to follow the text version of the tutorial, please visit the official iPod Nano hacking website by clicking here.

As you can see if you followed the video tutorial above, this hack is pretty simple. However, you can bet that we will be seeing a lot more from this small touch screen Apple device in the future. Do you own an iPod Nano 6G? If so, are you going to try out this hack?