Given the recent news thata jailbreak for tvOS 10.1.1 may be coming after all, we recently advised all Apple TV 4 owners todowngrade from tvOS 10.2 to tvOS 10.1.1 immediately before signing closes.
Hand in hand with the possibility of a jailbreak comes the necessity of saving blobs for your device, which will allow you to upgrade, downgrade, or restore your device at a later date, without worrying about signing windows. This guide will walk you through how to save blobs for your Apple TV.
Before we begin, a few pieces of general advice are in order, to let you know what you should be doing to stand the best chance of an enduring jailbreak.
General Advice
How to save blobs for Apple TV
1)Connect your Apple TV to your computer via USB-C or micro-USB (depending on the generation of Apple TV you own).
2)Open iTunes and select your Apple TV in the devices section.
3)A summary page will appear, showing the serial number and current tvOS version of your device. Click on the serial number field until a value entitledECIDappears.
4)Right-click theECIDfield, which will be a string of letters and numbers, and copy it.
5)Paste the value somewhere safe on your computer. This way, the next time you want to save blobs you won’t need to connect your Apple TV to your computer at all. (Once you’ve got your ECID, you can clickEject Apple TV…in iTunes and reconnect it to your TV. It doesn’t need to be connected in future to save blobs).
6)Open a browser and go to theTSS Saver website by /u/1Conan. This is an easy-to-use interface for tihmstar’s TSS Checker, and can save .shsh2 blobs for all devices.
7)We will now fill in the form. First, paste the ECID you copied in Step 4 into the relevant field. This field should be set toHexrather thanDecif you got your ECID from iTunes (which we do in this guide).
8)Select the identifier for your Apple TV. The first menu will obviously beAppleTV, the second must be the correct generation for your device. Mine was Apple TV 4 (2015), but you’ll know which Apple TV you have.
9)Leave theManually specify an apnonce…field blank, we do not want this feature for the Apple TV.
10)Tick theI’m not a robotbox. The finished form should look something like this:
11)Hit theSubmitbutton to send the request and save your Apple TV blobs.
12)Once saved, the following screen will appear with a download link for your blobs. you’re able to copy it down for later and have your blobs saved online for you, or you can click the link to download them to your computer now. I recommend downloading them so that you have a hard copy.
13)If you clicked the link to download now, it will now show you all the blobs you’ve ever saved for this device. You can select individual firmwares to download them, or clickDownload ZIPto download an archive of all the blobs ever saved for this device. You can save to Dropbox or OneDrive, or direct to the computer.
And that’s all there is to it. As you can see, my Apple TV 4 now has blobs saved for tvOS 10.1.1 and 10.2, the only signed firmwares at the time of writing.
With luck, everyone with an Apple TV 4 can downgrade to tvOS 10.1.1 in time now, and wait for a possible incoming jailbreak. Going forward, if you have your blobs saved, you’re able to use Prometheus to upgrade to whatever you want if new jailbreaks are released.
Good luck, and good blob-saving!
