September 11th, 2026

Having Fun with an iPod touch.

A truly magical handset.

The iPod touch and its Design.

Apple’s iPod touch is a bit of an odd device. It’s essentially an iPhone without the phone, or a super tiny iPad. It was the last iPod Apple ever made. I have one of those, the seventh-generation iPod touch. It was discontinued in May of 2022. Mine is from March of 2021. The seventh-generation iPod touch’s hardware is a bit hard to describe. Essentially, get a first-generation iPad mini, shrink it down to the size of an iPhone 5, and then shove a downclocked iPhone 7 without cellular inside it. Make it super skinny and slap an antenna oval on the back of it and you have an iPod touch. Thanks to its small size, it is quite easy to hold and use, especially compared to the massive size of today’s smartphones. And, as another bonus point, it has a headphone jack. This odd device proves that Apple almost certainly could shove a headphone jack on the larger iPhones they produce today.

The iPod touch 7 in my hand. It's small.

My OnePlus 12 next to the iPod touch. One of those is more comfortable to hold.

The OnePlus 12 and the iPod touch on a stand. The OnePlus is thicker and is missing a headphone jack.

The iPod touch 7 and the iPad 7. These two devices share the A10 chipsed, though the iPad has 3GB of RAM as opposed to 2GB. Both devices were launched in 2019 as well.

My iPhone 5s next to the iPod touch. They're about the same size. The iPhone is thicker.

The iPad mini 1 and the iPod touch. The iPad mini 1 was the first device to have that design. Ever since the iPod touch 5 Apple has used the same design for the iPod touch.

Jailbreaking the iPod touch.

Jailbreaking the iPod touch was a fun process. Initially, the device was running iOS 14.5 Beta 6, and I wanted to save those blobs. I tried Taurine, but it failed to jailbreak it. In the end, I settled on using Palera1n. It did the trick and I was able to save my lovely blobs (ios.cfw.guide, link HERE, is excellent for these things). Once done, I upgraded it to iOS 15.8.8. The upgrade took quite a while due to the iPod’s slow A10 chip. After it had completed, I went ahead and installed TrollStore. It’s a fairly simple process, and only needs to be done once, so long as you don’t update the iPod again. From there, all I had to do was download the Dopamine IPA file and install it via TrollStore. Once it’s installed, open the app and press “jailbreak”, and away you go. I also threw in Reynard Browser for some extra fun. I was just getting started on the party that this would be.

Installing Tweaks

It has been a long while since I’ve messed with installing jailbreak tweaks on anything. The last time I did so was with my iPhone 5s around three-and-a-half years ago or so (time flies). I had a whole new world of tweaks to explore, and I wasn’t going to wait much longer for them. The first one that I installed was AIM. I have been waiting for ages to try it on a device, and, now that the iPod is back in my hands, I can finally fulfill that wish. Exiwall also got an install on it, as that adds the lovely depth effect thing that iOS 16 has. 11Cam15 is one that I found useful as well, and it did not break the camera. I’ve installed quite a few other useful ones and will include a list here.

AIM on the lockscreen of my iPod touch. I have GesturesXV installed as well, hence the fancy controls.

11cam15 on the iPod touch. Quite nice to use.

I then went to the extra extent of ridiculous things you can do with a jailbreak. Someone has developed a tweak that brings Liquid Glass to older devices. I had to try it. On top of that, there was also the 26home tweak. I could not resist and installed it as well. For extra icing on that cake, GesturesXV and FloatingDockXVI got installed. That way I can have gesture navigation on my iPod. Yay!

Using the Jailbroken iPod.

Using the iPod after all of these mods is quite a fun experience. Gestures are amazing and actually improve the usability of the iPod. I rarely use that home button now. The Liquid Glass is a different story. The Liquid Glass tweak on its own does just fine. Drains the battery a bit faster, but looks extremely cool. My OnePlus 12’s knockoff attempt cannot compare to this knockoff. It bends the background in such a way as to look quite similar to water. Add in the 26home tweak and things get better. I can finally have dark mode icons, clear icons, or even tinted icons. It is visually appealing, at least to me.

The performance of the iPod does suffer. The Liquid Glass means that a lot of animations aren’t as smooth as they should be, and as a result it means the iPod is working hard to keep up with it. Once you are in an application, the battery life goes back to normal. Reynard has been an amazing thing, as I can finally browse the modern web without many issues. Reynard’s largest stain is its keyboard support, which is, quite frankly, atrocious. I cannot type well on it, as it constantly causes iOS to correct things it shouldn’t. That aside, Reynard’s Gecko engine base allows for so much more flexibility. The ability to install uBlock Origin makes it even better. I can wholeheartedly recommend Reynard to anyone with a TrollStore compatible device. In other apps, the iPod touch does just fine. There are no performance deficits so long as the Liquid Glass is not on-screen.

The home screen with 26home for the iOS 26 style home screen.

Pulling down the notification shade. Notice the Liquid Glass on it.

See the glass bar at the bottom?

When you drag your finger you can see the glass effect. Link HERE and HERE for video.

Tweak list, screenshots

Conclusion

Despite its small size and “slow” hardware, the iPod touch is quite a useful little device. It can handle a decent amount of visual effects being thrown at it, and it can still handle modern web browsing. On top of that, it gives me a decent gateway into iMessage without having to unearth an iPad. This makes the iPod touch go from being a small and outdated iOS device to being a truly magical experience.

Chickens!

A brief update on the (buk buk buk buk buk) chickens is that they are all (buk buk buk buk buk) molting and Agathae has (buk buk buk buk buk) gone broody AGAIN, much to the consternation of her fellow hens.