In an early morning, you wake up and get your iPhone beside your bed. As usual you tap on the Cydia icon and try to download some apps but your Cydia won’t open like what it normally does. First, do not get frustrated because you can always reinstall Cydia if there is something wrong with it. Is this the first time you try to open Cydia? If yes then there may be a few reasons.
Reason No 1: File lost during the installation. The installation process may look perfect but there must be something wrong. One very common issue is some important files are lost during the installation when Cydia server is overload. What can you do is to reinstall Cydia.
Reason No 2: You forgot to boot tethered your iDevice. This issue always happens to people who use tethered jailbreak technique to jailbreak their iDevice and download Cydia. The last step is to boot tethered the iDevice so that the iDevice won’t stay in semi-tethered status. However, this step is always forgotten. Cydia will not be working if an iDevice stay in semi-tethered mood or unjailbreak.
Reason No 3: Incomplete Installation. There are many reasons for an incomplete installation. One very obvious symptom is that your iDevice will show the hateful message “Internal Server Error” when you try to launch Cydia.
Well, the only solution is to reinstall Cydia no matter what are the reasons that cause your Cydia not working. There are few ways you can reinstall Cydia and these are the methods:
Method No 1: Reinstall Cydia without re-jailbreak
Yes you can reinstall Cydia without re-jailbreak your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. Many people do not know about this but it can be done. First, connect both the iDevice and computer to an active Wi-Fi hot-spot with a valid IP assigned to both the devices. Second, install an SFTP program to your computer. Third, key in the IP of the iDevice under Host Name. Fourth, login with root/alpine and type “ssh root@your.iPhone.ip.address”. Now you can remove the current not-working Cydia in your iDevice with “apt-get remove cydia” command. Lastly, you can reinstall Cydia with “apt-get install cydia” command. Please read download Cydia without jailbreak for more details.
Method No 2: Reinstall Cydia manually
To reinstall Cydia manually, first you must download the DEB File from Cydia server and store it to your local computer. You can download it here -> Cydia DEB File. Second, launch an SFTP Client program in your computer and connect both your devices together. Third, SSH the DEB File you downloaded from the link into your iDevice at this path: /private/var/mobile/documents/. Last but not least, tap on the Cydia DEB file and tap on the installer to reinstall Cydia. You will be prompted for update if there is any newer version. Please read How to manually install Cydia for more detail steps.
Both the method 1 and 2 shared above will help you to reinstall Cydia to iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch whenever your Cydia is not working. If you follow the steps and something has gone wrong or you have a better way to do the same thing, please share your thoughts here at the comment box below.