SoftwareNov 3, 2026, 12:54 AM UTC·2 min read

iOS 16 Boots on a Redmi Note 12 Thanks to AI-Assisted Hackios

Modders have booted iOS 16 on Xiaomi's Redmi Note phones using the open-source ios-sweet project, built with help from AI coding agents. It is far from usable.

An Android smartphone showing the iOS 16 lock screen, running on non-Apple hardware. — Image: xataka.com

SUMO

Dialo

ediviewer

Hobbyist developers have managed to run iOS 16 on Android hardware, including a Redmi Note 12 port that has been circulating in videos on social media. The effort, nicknamed "Hackios" and inspired by the Hackintosh scene, reverses what earlier projects tried: instead of putting Android on an iPhone, it puts iOS on Android phones.

How it works

The starting point is an open-source GitHub project called ios-sweet. It swaps the Linux kernel that Android phones normally use for XNU, the kernel Apple uses in its own devices and whose source code Apple publishes. The project then feeds XNU a device tree copied from an iPhone X, so the kernel believes it is starting up on an iPhone. Unmodified iOS 16 files taken from an iPhone X then run on the phone's own chip.

The iPhone X was reportedly chosen because it is the last iPhone generation without pointer authentication (PAC), a security feature that Qualcomm chips such as the one in the Redmi Note 10 Pro do not support. That suggests the approach is unlikely to carry over to newer iPhone software.

What works and what does not

On the Redmi Note 10 Pro, the system reaches the lock screen, home screen, Control Center and Settings, and touch input and physical buttons respond. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, mobile data, audio, cameras and biometric sensors do not work, and apps such as Messages, Phone and Photos show only a black screen. With no graphics driver, the display is drawn at roughly 20 to 30 frames per second, and booting takes four to five minutes.

Versions also exist for the Redmi Note 12 Pro and the LG V60. Work is under way on the OnePlus 7T, Redmi 5 Plus and Galaxy S23 Ultra, but that code is not public. Attempts on a Google Pixel 6 and a Galaxy S7 have failed so far. The developer behind the Redmi Note 12 port says sound, Wi-Fi and wallpaper work, though the system is very unstable. A separate group, OOSexGang, says it runs iOS 16.5 on a Poco X5 Pro.

The role of AI

Most of these ports lean on generative AI: the repositories include a NOTES.md file with instructions for agents such as Claude Code, ChatGPT Codex and Gemini. The speed at which such agents can produce software helps explain the recent wave of ambitious hobby projects, including hundreds of game decompilations running on unintended platforms.