the iphone guru

When upgrading to the latest iPhone firmware there’s always a bit of a hesitation for me because I know that I’m going to have to re-jailbreak my device, reinstall all of my apps and configure my home screen back the way I like it. Even official apps are spotty in whether or not they back up their settings. Here’s how to back up those apps and even your springboard layout.

First, you need to install three Apps from the Cydia app store. PkgBackup, Chronus and SBOrganizer.

1. Run SBOrganizer once so it can grab your springboard layout
2. Use Pkgbackup from cydia to save your cydia packages, then sync with iTunes
3. Use Chronus from cydia to back up app store apps with your user data
4. SSH  the contents of /var/mobile/Library/Peferences/Timcapsule to your hard drive
5. Restore your iPhone and set it up as a new iPhone
6. Re-jailbreak your iPhone
7. Re-Install PkgBackup, Chronus and SBOrganizer.
8. Sync with iTunes
9. SSH the Chronus files you moved to your hard drive back to /var/mobile/Library/Peferences/Timcapsule and restore them with Chronus
10. Run Pkgbackup and restore your Cydia packages
11. Reboot phone
12. Apply any other settings that were erased during the restore.

If you’d like to trust iTunes to restore your official apps, you can just use PkgBackup and SBOrganizer to backup and restore your Jailbreak apps only.