How can I manually install applications on a jailbroken iPad? I've had my jailbroken iPad for nearly a year. Over time, I've completely abandoned the idea of connecting it to iTunes at all - it just doesn't seem necessary, it's basically a full fledged computer itself. In addition, with it being the 64gb model, I wouldn't have the space to back up everything I have on there anyhow. Recently I decided to upgrade to 4.2.1, and as a safety net against data loss, I tar'd up the entire contents of the iPad to a USB drive (permissions, soft/hard links and all).

The upgrade was successful, but I'd like to be able to restore applications directly instead of re-downloading them from iTunes and then copying over the data/documents/library directories from my backup. Once caveat of doing things this way is that there may be a newer version of the app now on iTunes and my backup is no longer compatible with it.

What I'd like is to have the ability to restore the app directly to "/private/var/mobile/Applicaitons/[RANDOM HASH OR WHATEVER THIS IS]/". I've tried to do this, but I get a blank icon on the screen that doesn't successfully launch. I assume that during a "normal" application installation, there is some sort of registration process that takes place and that's the part I'm missing.

Can anyone provide some clues as to how the app install process works or shed some light on how I might accomplish a manual install?
Make sure you have appsync and installous from cydia installed on your iPhone, installed from the source
The app has to be a .ipa file.
Place the file in /private/var/mobile/documents/installous/downloads.
Open up installous and install from there.




Or use iPhone Explorer as described in this LifeHacker post:


  Using iPhone Explorer, you can backup or copy apps (and their settings) to your computer or to other iOS device—and it can do all of that without a jailbreak. To backup system files or default applications, like iOS's built-in calendar, you'll have to jailbreak your iOS device. (Even if you're not interested in backing up apps, iPhone Explorer is still great for mounting your iOS device as a disk.)