How to Kick iPhone out of Recovery Mode (Mac)

by lightmaster on Jul.18, 2009, under Guides, iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, iTouch 1g, iTouch 2g

The Info:

Sometimes your iPhone or iTouch can get stuck in Recovery mode and it seems like it might be bricked. Don’t worry, its probably not bricked. There are two very good and very easy methods of kicking your iPhone or iTouch out of Recovery mode: one for Mac and one for Windows. If you have any problems running iRecovery, @reply me using TweetBoard to the left or, if you don’t have a Twitter account, comment below.

The Requirements:

  1. iPhone stuck in Recovery mode
  2. or iTouch stuck in Recovery mode
  3. Mac OS X 10.4+

The Process:

  1. Download iRecovery.
  2. Install iRecovery.
  3. Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app
  4. Run this command: “iRecovery -s”
  5. Type: “printenv”
  6. Look for this variable in the list: “auto-boot”. Most likely, yours will be set to false (hence your problem).
  7. If “auto-boot” is set to “false” or isn’t present at all, follow the rest of this guide. If it’s set to true, try restarting your iPhone/iTouch by holding home and power for 10 seconds.
  8. Type this: “setenv auto-boot true”.
  9. Type: “saveenv”.
  10. Type: “reboot”.

Your iPhone/iTouch should now reboot into normal mode. If you get an error message that says something like “dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/local/lib/libusb-0.1.4.dylib”, that means that you have not installed libusb. Download and install libusb from http://ipitg.net/ifiles/libusb.pkg.tar.gz, then follow the guide again.

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18 Comments for this entry

  • dave
    July 31st, 2009 on 11:31 pm

    My 3GS got stuck in recovery mode after I attempted to do the 3.0.1 upgrade. I downloaded libush and irecovery with my iPhone connect via USB and went through the steps as laid out above and the phone has rebooted back in 3.0 no problem, with a prompt that there is a software upgrade :) Many thanks.

    Reply
  • shahid
    August 1st, 2009 on 4:11 pm

    wow that save my life! got it out of recovery mode so i updated itunes and tried running the update on the iphone 3gs again and same thing happended so i had to use the terminal to get it back out of recovery.. any idea how i can get my iphone 3gs updated as every time i try it goes to recovery mode??…im using mac by the way not windows. thanks

    Reply
  • Renee
    August 1st, 2009 on 10:23 pm

    OMG Thank you, it’s working again. Awesome steps, really easy to follow. Only prob is I still can’t update, it still crashes.

    Reply
  • Tiberious
    August 2nd, 2009 on 5:27 am

    I tried this on my locked 3GS and it worked a charm!! Thanks heaps!

    Reply
  • minu
    August 2nd, 2009 on 9:32 pm

    You just saved my day! After hours and hours restarting and reinstalling, checking firewalls and ports, your instructions finally got live back into my phone. I installed both iRecovery and libusb and it work first time.

    MANY, MANY THANKS

    I am not going to try it again I rather go with 3.0.0. :)

    Reply
  • Jeremy
    August 3rd, 2009 on 4:16 am

    Followed and worked perfectly! Thank you!!

    Reply
  • Josh
    August 3rd, 2009 on 6:46 am

    You’re a bloody genius, thanks you saved my phone

    Reply
  • Paul Dee
    August 7th, 2009 on 5:46 pm

    You my friend are a saint!
    I was in trouble for a while there.
    Sticking with 3.0.0

    Reply
  • Jared
    August 9th, 2009 on 4:25 pm

    Thank you… from the bottom of my heart!

    Reply
  • Gene
    August 19th, 2009 on 4:30 am

    Thank you, thank you, thank you.. this all saved my ass big time.. I’m so pissed at apple for this headache. Thanks again..

    Reply
  • Orca
    September 3rd, 2009 on 5:14 am

    To Nathan:

    I got the same problem, everytime i rebooted i got stuck again in the recoverymode. You probably forgot to use the command “saveenv”. Also check whether you got the kernelcache number right. This worked for me.

    Reply
  • Maddcow
    September 13th, 2009 on 9:45 am

    Just wanted to say a huge “Thank you” for this app & guide. I accidentally started Purplera1n without realizing that my iPhone 3GS was attached to my Mac and charging….and it then got stuck in recovery mode. I followed this guide and it worked perfectly…my 3GS is now out of recovery mode and functioning normally again!

    Reply
  • vince
    September 15th, 2009 on 12:57 am

    THANK YOU! finally found a solution that worked – was able to avoid having to restore and lose all my photos

    Reply
  • G$
    November 17th, 2009 on 2:13 pm

    When I run irecovery, from the desktop by typing “irecovery -s” in a terminal shell I get an error message “command not found”.
    Any ideas on what I’m doing wrong?
    Thanks for any info!

    Reply
  • G$
    November 17th, 2009 on 3:07 pm

    lightmaster , I’ll try that. And is it just one space between irecovery & -s?
    Also, not sure if it makes a difference but I’m on 10.4.11.
    And thanks for replying.

    Reply
    • lightmaster
      November 17th, 2009 on 3:15 pm

      Yes, there is a space between “iRecovery” and “-s”. And I believe iRecovery should work on 10.4.11, but I don’t have a copy of that version of OS X, so I can’t tell you for sure.

      Reply
  • G$
    November 17th, 2009 on 10:34 pm

    Well this didn’t work out at all, all the time I’ve spent trying to salvage what I have I could have redone everything by hand. Turns out that there are a lot more steps involved to get irecovery to work. Thanks for the help anyway!

    1) Download iRecovery
    2) Place both files on the Desktop
    3) Open terminal and type ‘cd ~/Desktop’
    4) Run command ‘chmod 777 libusb-0.1.4.dylib’
    5) Run command ‘chmod 777 iRecovery’
    6) Run command ‘defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE’
    7) Run command ‘killall Finder’
    8) Navigate Macintosh HD > usr > local > lib
    9) Copy the file libusb-0.1.4.dylib into that folder
    10) Open a new terminal
    11) Drag-and-drop the iRecovery file into the Terminal so that you get a shortcut to it.
    12) Append ‘-s’ to the end.
    13) Run command ‘fsboot’ (i had to do it twice)
    14) If the phone starts up locket once again, just run through steps 10-13 again.
    15) When done, open terminal again and type ‘defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE’
    16) Then run ‘killall Finder’ once again and your done!

    Reply

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