Mountaineer guide: find out why something crashed, share the log, use App Shield

Mountaineer keeps a diary of every Home Screen restart and crash on your jailbroken iPhone and explains each one in plain English. It also has App Shield, which can keep tweaks out of App Store apps that refuse to run on a jailbroken phone.

Before you start

• Jailbreak: Dopamine (rootless) on iOS 15 or later, with ElleKit or Substrate and PreferenceLoader. Your package manager installs these automatically if needed.
• Tested: the diary, Timeline, Clear Diary, App Shield's Disable tweaks in apps and respring labels are tested on iOS 17.1. On iOS 16 the app and respring labels work; other parts have had less testing there.
• Price: free. No account needed.
• What it can't do: Mountaineer doesn't prevent crashes and isn't a replacement for Safe Mode. It reports what it saw, and it never names a tweak as the definite culprit; a tweak on a crash's stack is a lead, not proof.

Set it up

1. Add the CarterWare source and install Mountaineer (see install.html).
2. Respring (restart the Home Screen) when your package manager offers to. Mountaineer starts recording from the next Home Screen launch.
3. Open the Mountaineer app from your Home Screen and go to the Doctor tab.
4. Check the Tweak row. It should say "loaded" with a recent heartbeat. If it says "respring once", respring again.

You know it's working when the status card at the top of Doctor says All clear (or Watching, if there were recent unclean exits) and the Timeline tab has a first row such as "SpringBoard started (first run)". On its first scan, Mountaineer also imports any crash reports iOS saved in the last seven days, so you may see older entries straight away.

Using the app

The app has four tabs: Timeline, Apps, Tweaks and Doctor. Pull down on any list, or tap the refresh button, to check for new crash reports.

Timeline

Every event, newest first: resprings, reboots, crashes and memory kills. Each row shows a plain title, how long ago it happened, the crash type and, when there is one, the code location where it crashed (the "faulting frame"). The control at the top switches between All, Crashes (crashes and unclean exits only) and Hide noise (hides crashes from apps that are known to crash a lot on jailbroken phones). The search bar, Filter events, matches titles, app names, crash types and tweak names.

Common titles you'll see:

• Intentional respring: you, your package manager or Mountaineer's own Respring button restarted the Home Screen on purpose.
• Unclean SpringBoard exit: the Home Screen stopped without saying goodbye, from a crash or a forced kill.
• SpringBoard killed for using too much memory: iOS shut the Home Screen down for memory, with the peak in MB.
• Respring didn't come back cleanly: a respring was requested but the Home Screen didn't come back normally, usually because a tweak crashed it into Safe Mode.
• Userspace reboot and Device restarted: the whole system restarted, partly or fully.

Event details

Tap a row to open it. What Happened shows when it happened, the Process and Bundle ID, Crash class, Faulting frame, Exception, Reason and the Report path of iOS's original crash file. Suspected Jailbreak Images lists tweak files that appear in the crash's backtrace, with the reminder that being there isn't proof. Environment shows a noise tag when the app is one that often crashes on its own. Under Actions, Copy summary copies this one event and Reveal path shows the crash file's location with Copy path.

Apps and Tweaks

Apps (titled App Crashes) lists app crash reports from the last seven days. Tweaks (titled Tweak Faults) lists only crashes with a tweak file on the backtrace. Both open the same detail screen.

Doctor

The status card sums things up: All clear, Watching (unclean exits in the last 48 hours), Needs attention (a health check failed) or Paused (Mountaineer is off). Below it are the Enabled switch, the App Shield switches with a Shield status line, and the Health rows: Device, Jailbreak, Diary, Tweak, Crash reports, Unclean (48h), App crashes and Last. At the bottom are Copy Report, Clear Diary and Respring.

Common tasks

Find out why something crashed

1. Open Mountaineer and pull down on Timeline to refresh.
2. Find the row that matches the time it happened. Tap Crashes at the top to hide the rest.
3. Tap the row and read the title, Crash class and Reason.
4. Look at Suspected Jailbreak Images. If a tweak is listed, that tweak is a good first suspect. Check the Tweaks tab to see whether it shows up in other crashes too.
5. Test the suspect: turn that tweak off (or uninstall it), repeat what you were doing, and see whether a new crash row appears.

If the row is a memory kill, no tweak is named because there's no crashing stack. Too many Home Screen tweaks, a leaking tweak or a heavy widget or theme are the usual causes.

Check whether tweaks are making an app crash

1. Open Doctor and turn on Disable tweaks in apps.
2. Close the app from the app switcher and open it again.
3. If the crashes stop, a tweak was involved. Turn the switch back off and test your tweaks one at a time.

This switch affects every App Store app, so turn it off again when you're done.

Share a crash log with a developer

1. Open Doctor and tap Copy Report. The full report is copied to your clipboard. The same button is in Settings → Mountaineer.
2. Paste it into the developer's bug form, GitHub issue or Discord. It's formatted to read cleanly in those places.
3. Add what you were doing, what you expected and what happened.

The report starts with a short What happened list, followed by your device model, iOS version, free storage, installed CarterWare packages, recent crash summaries with their file paths, and the last 25 diary rows in a collapsible block. Read it before posting publicly. Mountaineer never sends anything anywhere itself.

To share only one event, open it and tap Copy summary instead. If the problem is with Mountaineer itself, use Settings → Mountaineer → Report a Bug and paste the report there.

Use App Shield for an app that hates jailbreaks

1. Open Doctor in the app, or Settings → Mountaineer. Make sure Enabled is on.
2. Turn on Disable tweaks in apps to stop other tweaks from loading into App Store and sideloaded apps.
3. If the app still complains, also turn on Hide jailbreak from apps. Common jailbreak folders and files then look missing to those apps.
4. When Relaunch apps to apply appears, tap Respring to restart every app now, or Later to apply it as each app next opens.

App Shield never touches Apple apps, Settings, the Home Screen, Sileo, Zebra, Filza, CarterWare apps or apps your jailbreak installed. Hiding is light: apps with strong jailbreak detection may still notice.

Turn App Shield off

1. Turn off Disable tweaks in apps and Hide jailbreak from apps (or turn off Enabled to switch off everything).
2. Close the affected app from the app switcher and open it again so your tweaks load into it.

Clear the history

1. Open Doctor and tap Clear Diary, or use Settings → Mountaineer → Clear Diary.
2. Tap Clear to confirm.

This deletes every event on the phone. Crash reports iOS saved before now won't be imported again, so after your next respring the Timeline starts with a single row.

Respring without a false alarm

Use Respring in the Doctor tab or in Settings → Mountaineer. It's logged as an Intentional respring. Resprings from Sileo, Zebra and sbreload are recognised too, but killall SpringBoard looks exactly like a crash and is logged as an unclean exit.

Settings explained

Settings → Mountaineer has the same switches and actions as the app's Doctor tab.

Doctor and Diary summaries

The Doctor and Diary sections of the Settings pane fill in their text when you open the screen. Doctor shows the Mountaineer version, iOS version, device and jailbreak, whether the diary can be saved, whether crash reports can be read, the tweak's heartbeat, event counts (including unclean exits in the last 48 hours), free storage and the current App Shield state. Diary lists the eight newest events, marked ⚠ for unclean exits, ✓ for intentional resprings and ✗ for crashes. Tap Refresh Doctor to update both.

Troubleshooting

The Timeline is empty

That usually just means nothing has gone wrong. If you expected rows, open Doctor: make sure Enabled is on and the Tweak row says "loaded". If it says "respring once", respring and check again.

Doctor says the diary is "NOT writable"

Reinstall Mountaineer from your package manager. Installing fixes the ownership of its diary folder.

Every respring shows as "Unclean SpringBoard exit"

You're probably restarting with killall SpringBoard or a tool that kills the Home Screen outright. Use Mountaineer's Respring button, your package manager's respring, or sbreload; those are logged as intentional.

SpringBoard crashed but no tweak is named

When a tweak crashes the Home Screen into Safe Mode, the jailbreak often catches it before iOS writes a crash report, so there's no stack to read. You'll see Respring didn't come back cleanly or Unclean SpringBoard exit. Use the time of the row and think about what you installed or changed just before.

A tweak stopped working inside one app

Check whether App Shield is on. Disable tweaks in apps and Hide jailbreak from apps both keep every other tweak out of App Store apps, not just the one you were worried about. Turn them off, then close and reopen the app.

The app still detects my jailbreak with App Shield on

App Shield's hiding is light and only covers common jailbreak paths. Apps with stronger detection can still notice. Mountaineer can't bypass those.

Lots of TikTok or Shortcuts crashes

Some apps and system services crash often on jailbroken phones on their own. Those rows get a noise tag. Tap Hide noise at the top of the Timeline to hide them.

Questions

Does Mountaineer stop crashes?

No. It records and explains crashes, and App Shield can keep tweaks out of App Store apps. It isn't Safe Mode and can't stop the Home Screen from crashing.

Can Mountaineer tell me which tweak caused a crash?

Not with certainty. It lists tweak files that appear on the crashing code's backtrace, which is a strong lead but not proof. Confirm by turning the suspect off and seeing whether the crash comes back.

Does App Shield work per app?

No. In this version, both App Shield switches apply to every App Store and sideloaded app at once. Apple apps, package managers, Filza, CarterWare apps and apps installed by your jailbreak are always left alone.

Does Mountaineer upload my crash logs?

No. Mountaineer has no network code. Reports only leave your phone when you copy and paste them yourself.

How much history does Mountaineer keep?

The most recent 200 events. When you first install it, it also imports crash reports from the previous seven days. Clear Diary deletes everything.

Is Mountaineer free?

Yes. Mountaineer is free on the CarterWare source, with no account needed.