How To: Fix iBooks From Crashing On Jailbroken iOS 5

If you’ve updated your iDevice to iOS 5 and did the smart thing of jailbreaking it, you may have noticed that iBooks instantly crashes after opening it. The reason iBooks crashes is because of the sandbox – partitioned app folders that are protected from other apps accessing them – protection in iOS 5. As with every iOS release and jailbreak, the jailbreak community eventually fixes every issue and this problem isn’t excluded. Let’s get started on how to fix iBooks from crashing in jailbroken iOS 5.

Warning: If you choose to follow the steps below you will not be able to buy books within iBooks or sync them with iTunes. There is a workaround, however, but I wanted to make this clear before we begin.

What You’ll Need

A jailbroken iOS 5 iDevice
A new iBooks app icon
SBSettings from Cydia
iFile from Cydia

How To Fix iBooks From Crashing

One

If you currently have iBooks installed, delete it now. Then go to the App Store and download a fresh copy of iBooks. After downloading, do not open the new copy of iBooks.

Two

Open up Cydia and purchase iFile ($4.00) from the BigBoss repo. Then download SBSettings to respring your device later.

Three

Once iBooks is done installing, open up iFile and navigate to /var/mobile/Applications/(iBooks folder). Once you get inside the Applications folder, you’ll notice that the folder names are randomly generated characters. Hopefully, you don’t have too many apps installed because you’ll have to go through them to find the iBooks folder.

Note: As our reader KFM pointed out, if you have SBSettings installed you can use the it to find the name of the iBooks folder. Swipe to reveal SBSettings and click the “More” button. Then scroll down until you see the “App Folders” option, and inside you can tap any app (iBooks in this case) to reveal its path.

Four

Once you’ve found the iBooks folder, click the Edit button in the top right corner. Then select the iBooks.app folder. Now tap the clipboard icon in the bottom right corner and choose Copy/Link.

Five

Now tap Done in the top right corner and navigate to /Applications and paste the iBooks.app folder we just copied. Once again, tap Edit, the clipboard icon, and then Paste. iFile will start copying over the folder. When it’s done copying, tap Done in the top right corner.

Six

Now that we’ve moved the iBooks.app folder to the correct destination, open it up to edit the Info.plist file. Scroll all way down and tap on Info.plist when you find it. Select property list editor. Tap CFBundleIdentifier and change com.apple.iBooks to com.apple.iBooksFix. Tap Done in the top right corner and then close out of iFile and respring.

Seven

You’ll notice that iBooks is a square icon on your springboard. If you’re not bothered by the square icon, you can stop here and start enjoying iBooks again.

If you’re like me, that square icon is going to bother you every time you see it. To fix that, we’re going to transfer the icon we downloaded earlier and replace it with the current one. Open up iFile again and start up the built-in Web Server. Take note of your iDevice’s IP address and port number. For example, my iPad’s web server address is 192.168.0.73:10000.

Eight

From your computer, open up a browser and type in your iDevice’s IP address and the port number (it should be 10000). Navigate again to /var/stash/Applications/iBooks.app. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page where you’ll find Upload a file. Click Choose File and browse your computer for the Icon-iPad.png file you downloaded earlier. Then click Upload.

Nine

On your iDevice, close out of the iFile Web Server by tapping Done in the top right corner. Drop down SBSettings again and respring for the last time. You should now have iBooks running on your jailbreak iOS 5 iDevice!

The Bad News

Because we’ve moved iBooks from its original location, you won’t be able to buy books within the app or sync them with iTunes. Understandably, this is a nuisance for most of us, but better than not having iBooks at all. The good news is there is an easy way to manually transfer your books from your computer to your iDevice using iFile.

How To Copy Books to iBooks

Open iFile on your iDevice and start the Web Server as we did previously. Using your computer’s browser, navigate to your iDevice’s IP address and the Web Server’s port number. Now navigate to /var/mobile/Documents and click the Choose File button at the bottom. Navigate to your .epub file and then click Upload. You’ll notice iFile on your iDevice will display the upload log and should say it successfully uploaded the .epub.

Repeat this process for as many books as you have and you’ll be back to normal in no time. Once you’re done uploading, close out of the Web Server and tap the .epub you want to read from inside iFile. If you open iBooks, the book will not be there. You must open the .epub inside iFile and tap the iBooks option.

We realize this is quite a lengthy process to just get iBooks working in iOS 5. If you’re looking for a much faster work-around, we suggest downloading the Kindle for iOS app from the App Store to read your books. But until the jailbreak devs figure out a real work-around, this method proves to be the best. If you’re having any issues or have any questions, let us know in the comments below!

Patrick Bisch

Patrick is the founder and editor-in-chief of pinglio. He works as a system administrator and studied at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He currently lives in Chicago with his girlfriend and two dogs.

Sidney Vega

The icon fix is not working. I followed the steps.
- http://www.pinglio.com Patrick Bisch
  
  Hm, try downloading any of these icons: http://xsellize.com/topic/165275-ibooks-fixed-working-on-ios5-jailbreak/page__view__findpost__p__658545
  
  Also, make sure you’re copying the icon to the right directory (/var/stash/Applications/iBooks.app). For some reason, I found mine at the root.
- http://www.pinglio.com Patrick Bisch
  
  Hm, try downloading any of these icons: http://xsellize.com/topic/165275-ibooks-fixed-working-on-ios5-jailbreak/page__view__findpost__p__658545
  
  Also, make sure you’re copying the icon to the right directory (/var/stash/Applications/iBooks.app). For some reason, I found mine at the root.
MarcosPako

Good job!!!
o/
Faran

Hi Patrick. Thanks for this post. It was good. But I want to add something here. I dont know how it happened but i followed your whole procedure and finally i got ibook installed. (icon with square corners). But i was unable to copy the books as you have mentioned. So I was very disappointed. By chance i opened app store and it give me a prompt to install ibooks software once again. So i did that. Now I have 2 ibook software once again on my ipad desktop. And more interestingly I can add books directly from itunes. (WHich is great as i can copy a large number of books in one go). But for the info please note that when i sync the books with itunes they appear in the ibook application with square corners and not with rounded corners.
Coolrockers53

Thnak you so much man… your my life saver..
Rick Mills

Thanks for the post, but you need to move ‘the bad news’ to the top. You have no idea how pissed off it makes people when they find out what they just did was pointless as the app is completely crippled.
- http://www.pinglio.com Patrick Bisch
  
  Thanks for the suggestion, @google-e03d7c99ed696a0064e6098233f25a82:disqus. I’ve added a warning at the beginning of the post.
http://twitter.com/wizard32843 David Hsu

Icon tricks didn’t work. But magically… all my books were still there!
Reading happily now. Thanks.
Grsld

Thanks for the great guide. I followed it several times but iBooks is still force-closing on me. I don’t understand what I could be doing wrong, I’m so disappointed is this happening to anyone else?
- jackiemacks
  
  it’s not working for me neither. I did everything exactly how he said and still it crashes as soon as I open the epub file from iFile. I don’t know how else to get this to work.
Gildnerw

A few notes to add to this:
1. Did not try the icon trick so can’t comment.
2. Don’t forget to delete the “old” iBooks. You can always install it later if this thing gets fixed.
3. Recommend turning off Sync Books with the device in iTunes. If you have forgotten to delete the old one and then try to Sync books, they don’t download properly into the “new” iBooks.
4. Contrary to everything I’ve read, the Store works for me in the “new” iBooks. I can search for and buy new books and I can download books previously purchased in iTunes.
5. Previously purchased books will be in the iCloud but they will download and they will work.
6. If you purchase a new book on your device, it will show up in iTunes on your computer to be downloaded on another device if you like.
wil cacayan

downloading direct from iBooks store after this fix actually works! bravo! icon fix also works for me.
Pingback: Anonymous
Word

Not really ‘fixed’ as described in the title. If users are unable to add additional books via sync or purchase its BROKEN.
- Word
  
  But thanks anyway.
KFM

If you have SBSettings, you can find the folder in the “App folders” section after clicking “More”
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001735907903 Patrick Slee

It was working for a while and then I downloaded the Untethered package from Cydia and now it won’t open. I am annoyed by this as I have gotten really into a book and now I have to use…:shudder:…stanza.