Ridiculous hardware prices and hyperscaler nonsense inspired me over the summer.
Turn your old iPhone into a NAS with Time Machine compatible SMB shares, Jekyll-aware web server, S3 storage and Git remote.
Beta opens August 31.
@palmin brilliant!
@palmin TestFlight is closed, but psyched to buy when it is out
@Migueldeicaza I’m opening the TestFlight at the end of the month as I need to complete my 50 years celebration without my inbox being filled with bug reports. 😅
@palmin solid planning
@palmin oops I skipped over the very important “opens August 31”
@palmin That’s the weirdly nerdy and clever kind of apps we’ve come to expect from you 🤗
Aug 22, 2026, 6:37 PM@palmin Whoa… AWESOME!
Aug 22, 2026, 6:38 PM@palmin Not sure if it's a coincidence or perhaps we share a like for a certain musician.
@fds probably not a coincidence… try to hover your mouse over the tagline
Aug 22, 2026, 7:33 PM@palmin Nice easter egg. 😄
@palmin Looks like a great idea.
About the claim "being reachable from the internet is optional", that might be true of the app but I think iOS will want to ping Apple every 2 or 3 years. Last time I disconnected an iPod Touch and moved the clock a few years in the future it required some kind of reactivation over the internet before it'd boot again. Unless things have changed,there will be an limit to how long the device can truly stay offline.
@michelf That might be true. My perspective was that of the app itself and the services it offered.
Being reachable from the Internet IS optional and some Internet providers will not even allow it. In any case I think many users will focus on the LAN part.
@palmin Okay, I read your page wrong, as if the device could be completely offline, meaning LAN only without internet being accessible from the device. That's not what you're claiming. Sorry for the confusion.
@palmin that’s very clever!
@palmin No old iPhone (4s & 6+) & original Air w iOS v12.5.8? :(
@antdude It was extremely difficult to go back past iOS 15 as I would have needed a Mac running an old version of macOS.
Aug 22, 2026, 8:28 PM@AT1ST @antdude I have an old Mac lying around so I could in theory go back back to iOS 12 but that is the limit.
App Store no longer accepts submissions made with Xcode versions below 26 and Xcode 26 does’t support iOS 11 or older.
That would extend support to iPhone 5s and iPad Air, but I feel like iOS 15 is a pretty good compromise.
@palmin @AT1ST @antdude if you could in future go as low as 12.x that would be fab. Or in magical world, open source the free build so others can go through the headaches themselves (doubt this will be possible though logistically with code abstraction). iOS 12.x will allow for 6 & 5s devices which I suspect there could be reasonable amount of devices. I have a spare 6 which surprisingly still has great battery life but have sparse use atm
@InterfaceEngineer @AT1ST @antdude I have an iPhone 5s I adore that's stuck on iOS 12, so I've researched this a lot.
Xcode 27 drops support for iOS 14 and lower, and the App Store will likely stop accepting Xcode 26 builds in April 2027, making updates impossible.
iOS 12 also lacks async/await in Swift, which makes networking code much harder to write, and this app has a lot of it.
@palmin good timing, I will get an iPhone SE (1st generation) in few days
Aug 22, 2026, 8:27 PM@palmin Not to be "That Guy" for too long, but... should we expect that this might expand to Android devices in the future? Or is that something that likely would be out of scope given the Time Machine features and such?
Aug 22, 2026, 8:37 PM@palmin Computer Scientist and Sysadmin here. Your project is cool, and I like your thinking (to keep decent hardware in use, and find very economical hardware) however...
- Once the OS is too out of date (because #Apple abandoned that version of #iOS or #iPadOS), one is asking for security vulnerabilities that'll never get patched. The server will be asking to be pwned. AI is **extremely** good at finding security vulnerabilities these days! #Infosec
- Please consider using any cheap, trustworthy SBC *with an ethernet port* (refraining from serving anything out over wifi - the dropped packets and higher latency are a bad idea for a *server*), ideally with some storage media better than a MicroSD card or USB stick (can have poor longevity).
@d1 The app has a mechanism allowing me to warn users about security vulnerabilities and in extreme cases to disable the services it exposes.
Aug 22, 2026, 9:08 PM@palmin nice!! I had a quick look at a used price of an iPhone 11 (the oldest iPhone still receiving security updates from #Apple). Costs about the same as a new Raspberry Pi 4 with 1GB of RAM (together with a few of the barest accessories like power supply, cheap case, and higher quality, but small capacity MicroSD card).
I think your project is a cool idea for any iPhone 11+, iPad 8th Gen+, iPad Air 3rd Gen+, or iPad Mini 5th Gen+, **that people already own**, and are collecting dust in a drawer.
@d1 @palmin FWIW, while iPhone 11 is capped at iOS 26, that doesn’t meant it’s the oldest phone getting security updates. Apple routinely releases security updates for older OSs, not just the current one. Example https://support.apple.com/en-us/148287
@d1 @palmin I think this risk depends a lot on what you are trying to protect against, a dedicated NAS probably doesn't need any other apps installed that could be updated with malware and the NAS app is the only needed network service, maybe the biggest risk is being unable to update the NAS itself and having it exposed to malicious clients, or OS services that either listen, or reach out, and process untrustworthy data, like iMessage image decoding. Maybe the app could work in Lockdown mode? Have instructions to disable as many unnecessary services as possible to reduce exposure even if the software is vulnerable in the future.
@raven667 @d1 I will see how I can help the users lock this down as much as possible.
I think many will have this running on their LAN with no way to reach it from the outside and then another cohort will expose it to the outer Internet.
These are distinct parts of the app and I can make different recommendations for each.
Aug 22, 2026, 9:44 PM@palmin @raven667 I guess everyone needs to think over the security, and threat model, that works for them... If somehow VLAN'ed away from the rest of the LAN (obtaining some protection from the router's ability to partition up a LAN), then I say there is greatly minimized risk, in the case of older, unsupported versions of iOS and iPadOS. But VLAN's are kind of complicated.
It's been my experience that it's always best to just start with new enough hardware that the OS won't "expire" on me for a good long while into the future. I want to set up a server, and then forget it.
@palmin This is the way!
@palmin That’s awesome! Been looking for something like this that actually works
Since jailbreaking is kinda dead there wasn’t any good option anymore
@stux I had to post tonight because I couldn’t keep it secret anymore.
But I’m not opening the beta until next monday as I want to finish a birthday celebration before the support emails start coming in.
Aug 23, 2026, 9:17 AM
@palmin old iPhone, 64gb... LOL 😂 Great idea reusing old hardware!!! But, sorry to say so, it's going to be easier to use the cloud; and what matters the most, is safer for reliability.
@petaqui You do what you want but it isn’t like iPhones are limited to internal storage.
@palmin actually I've never had one, but I've heard my friends struggling with storage, that's why I said so. But great to know!
@palmin Love this idea. Especially on a USB-C iPad for example.
@john Things do get a little more convenient when you do not have to go through the Lightning port. 😅
@palmin haha nice. And you can get Ethernet easily too… 👍
@palmin that’s crazy.. and I’d love to try it. Unfortunately there are no spots left on TestFlight
@palmin great project. If I were in charge at Apple, I’d buy it for a few million and then continue it as a free officially supported product.
@palmin tempting
It's great concept, love to do it.
But bet it's as difficult to implement as it is to understand what "SMB shares, Jekyll-aware web server, S3 storage and Git remote" really are for the novice.
Other prob, spending that much for a "phone" in the first place seemed as if hardware prices where that high how long ago for apple, now many more, will become trillion dollar company's.
Ploys to raise prices, it's never ending now with anarchy so rampant.
More dif lacking i anything.