// the find
opa334/Dopamine
Dopamine is a semi-untethered jailbreak for iOS 15 and 16
Dopamine is a rootless, semi-untethered jailbreak for iOS 15 and 16 (arm64 and arm64e). It runs as a user-space app, requires a reboot to re-jailbreak after each restart, and patches the kernel without modifying the root filesystem. The audience is iOS security researchers and people who want to run tweaks on older devices.
The exploit layering is worth studying: it ships multiple independent kernel exploit paths (kfd, multicast_bytecopy, weightBufs, dmaFail) and selects at runtime based on iOS version and device, which is exactly the right architecture for a tool that has to work across a wide version matrix. The rootless design — tweaks install under /var rather than touching / — means updates don't brick the device and the approach is forward-compatible with Apple's sealed system volume. The kfd integration is clean; it wraps libkfd's puaf primitives into a well-separated module rather than inlining kernel read/write everywhere. CI via GitHub Actions with build validation is present, which is more than most jailbreak projects bother with.
The README is essentially empty — a logo, a version range, and a link to the website. Someone trying to understand the exploit chain or contribute has to read source cold or find a third-party writeup. Semi-untethered means every reboot requires running the app again from a sideloaded IPA, which requires a paid Apple developer account or a tool like AltStore; that friction isn't documented anywhere in-repo. iOS 16.7+ and iOS 17+ are out of scope and the repo gives no indication of whether that's a temporary or permanent limitation, which matters a lot if you're evaluating it for a specific device. Several exploit modules ship precompiled static libraries (libgrabkernel2.a, libpartial.a) with no source — you're trusting binaries you can't audit.