PixeliOS: iOS userland

The recipe that builds the iOS 16.7 root filesystem for the PixeliOS port (Apple XNU and iOS on a Google Pixel 6a, Tensor G1). The root is flashed to the phone's userdata partition and mounted by the patched kernel.

AI-driven development. This project is written mostly by AI coding agents under the direction of a human maintainer, who owns the phone and decides what is flashed or published. Read the code before you trust it. Details: docs/AI_DEVELOPMENT.md.

This repository holds scripts only. No Apple binaries are distributed: the IPSW restore image is downloaded on your own machine and the root is assembled from it there.

Status (observed on hardware, 2026-10-22): the root built with this recipe boots to launchd, the lock screen and the home screen on a Pixel 6a; touch works, the UI is slow, and Wi-Fi, GPU, audio, camera and modem are not done. Details are in pixelios-site (docs/STATUS.md).

• tools/build-ios-root.sh, tools/build-ios-root-rootless.sh: build the root (the rootless variant needs no sudo, see docs/ROOTLESS_BUILD.md)
• tools/mkiosroot.sh, tools/mkinit.py, tools/sweet-init.S, tools/patch-launchd-plist.py: image assembly, init and launchd tweaks
• tools/sweet-root-tweaks.py: root tweaks (our own, clean-room, written from the spec docs/cleanroom/sweet-root-tweaks-spec.md in the super repo)
• tools/ios-root-plan.py, tools/check-ios-root.py: plan and verify a root before flashing

Four files in tools/ (mkiosroot.sh, mkinit.py, sweet-init.S, patch-launchd-plist.py) derive from ios-sweet (MIT, Copyright (c) 2026 dipa-studio), taken at commit 11da58b with our changes applied; the licence text is in LICENSE-ios-sweet.txt.

Fix-forward (user decision, 2026-10-25): origin/main history holds upstream-patches/tools__sweet-root-tweaks.py.patch (blob 4a855b6827), which shares 30 of 177 lines with a third-party-derived source [observed, line comparison]. tools/sweet-root-tweaks.py was replaced by a clean-room version (commit 9e4e38d) [src]. The old patch cannot be unpublished and stays in history; no history rewrite was done. This is a maintainer's record, not a legal opinion.

Other repositories: pixelios-kernel (shim, XNU patches, boot tools), pixelios-site (docs and status). Our code is MIT; read SECURITY.md and CONTRIBUTING.md.