- Some developers have figured out a way to run iOS on Android phones.
- The process involves spoofing an iPhone X’s device drivers and running a custom version of the iPhone’s XNU kernel.
- Many of the components don’t work, but we’re seeing efforts to make them usable, one by one.
Most popular Android skins now tend to copy iOS in terms of aesthetics. But what about real, actual iOS running on Android devices? I thought I was dreaming when I first heard claims that developers were porting iOS to Android devices. But over the last couple of days, I’ve seen countless reports of Apple’s proprietary operating system booting on a range of Android devices.
It’s part of a new movement called “Hackios,” inspired by the iconic Hackintosh, which runs macOS on non-Apple hardware. The idea comes from an enthusiast’s GitHub project called “iow-sweet,” which replaces Android’s stock Linux kernel with XNU, Apple’s custom kernel for iPhones and iPads. A kernel is the core program of any operating system that dictates how hardware interacts with the software running on it. Here’s a detailed explainer on kernels if you’d like to read one.