Show HN: Run full iOS 16.5 firmware on Android Devices

> It is a research bench, not a ROM: a session lasts a given number of seconds, then the kernel returns to the loader and hands over its log.

I wonder if it is here because Claude would deploy safeguards and not proceed with the project otherwise.

I found the website to be quite nauseating to look at, so I decided to use the GitHub link instead.

But it's quite impressive that it works on QEMU, POCO X5 Pro 5G and some Xiaomi devices too.

Website is here: https://hackios-web.vercel.app/en

Source Code: https://github.com/oosexgang/hackios-xnu-kernel

It's interesting that this can be done, but why would anyone want to run iOS on Android devices? A more desirable outcome would be running a free Android distro like Graphene on Apple hardware. Or indeed just liberating phones controlled by Google by hacking the bootloader and replacing the OS.

Maybe tomorrow we get Android running on the iPhone (and Linux on the iPad please).

It seems a bit crazy to me, plus now it opens the door to many iPhone copies... we'll have to be very careful

This is going to be fun. There are already replica phones for the flagship phones that are running a shitty android version that has been customized to look like iOS. People need to tripple check now when buying older used iPhone models.

There was a time that I would have liked iOS to run on other hardware. These days, it is so clunkly, that the the desire is not there.

Someone finally did this, wow! 2026 just keeps getting more crazy.

I'm doing the same thing with my Oneplus 6T, I have Claude piloting my phone over adb booting new candidate kernels and checking the results

What a time to be alive!

I wonder, why 16.5? (That would be 2023's versión).

Not to detract from how awesome this is, just curious.

This is great. Running a virtual OS on your phone is a great way to explore apps without worrying about excess data collection and permissions if done correctly. And iOS apps on android? Brilliant. A few platforms target iOS exclusively or initially due to strategic budgeting.

There is one, uh, minor drawback:

  > Does not work (yet)
  >
  > Charging under our kernel (the phone only discharges)

It has an, uh, interesting funding model: “$HACKIOS ON BNB CHAIN The project has its own community token, live on flap.sh. Each trade carries a 1% fee that supports the team and funds development.”

Important to note that a large percentage of the current versions of A and B-tier iOS apps won't run on an iOS this old.

But this is still a big step for research purposes.

Next; IOS will be decompiled and open source

I suppose Anthropic has relaxed its safety checks to such an extent that Claude now agrees to port iOS to Android phones?

Great work. This is neat kind of like age old there used to be hackintosh for macs. Now for ios. With this do you have access to app store. I think there is a unique identifier that android will lack for it to work.

Why do these demonstrations all stop at iOS 16? What changed with iOS 17?

Should be called phockintosh! I don’t see a use case for it but cool concept

cool, but probably better to place your time and energy into a more applicable use.

Wow, do I smell the opportunity to have IOS analogy to Graphene OS built on top of such concept?

amazing, but who is OO SEX GANG

Does this make it possible to quality control iOS apps without MacOS runners with xcodebuild in CI like GitHub Actions?

Hmm. Maybe small iPhone might be easier to revive than we thought!

Can you make a GSI to run on any Android Phone?

What, no, why?! Joking but kind of also not, Apple is terrible at software, amazing at hardware, what the people (me) want is the opposite, Android running on Apple hardware :)

I wonder how many if these AI projects have malware?

Hardware is so powerful, that soon we will be able to run anything using anything, if you have access to whatever you need to run, and access is lacking only if it is streaming content from cloud or hardware encrypted.

Wow

Amazing. On par with cutting off my leg before playing soccer.

Madness. I love it.

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I'm getting exhausted from all these AI vibe coded projects. Like this is cool, sure, but it's less cool than if someone had figured out how to do it themselves instead of having Claude do it. It's like chasing the dragon but for coding projects.