A decade after getting banned from the App Store, iFixit is back with a free DIY repair app that uses AI to diagnose problems and guide users as they fix their Apple devices.
iFixit trained the app’s AI-powered FixBot on 20 years of the company’s highly regarded repair guides. Now the iFixit app, released Tuesday, promises to make fixing broken iPhones and MacBooks a breeze (as long as you don’t have clumsy sausage fingers).
Plus, the iFixit app features a built-in real-time battery monitor that will prompt you when to replace a failing battery (with iFixit parts, of course).
iFixit app uses AI to diagnose and guide DIY repairs
iFixit is probably best known for its annual iPhone teardowns, which garner widespread attention for revealing the guts of Apple’s new devices. But the company, which primarily makes money by selling spare parts, has long been a champion of the right to repair, the growing movement to encourage consumers to fix their own devices and reduce e-waste.
As well as providing thousands of detailed repair guides on its website, iFixit and its founders have long advocated for laws requiring manufacturers to provide easy access to parts, manuals and other DIY tools. Even Apple, which has traditionally been hostile to tinkerers, has in recent years hopped on the right to repair bandwagon with a fairly comprehensive Self Service Repair Program that offers parts, tools and guides.
However, in 2015, iFixit fell afoul of Apple. iFixit’s app was pulled from the App Store after the company tore down a special developer version of the Apple TV set-top box. Apple said the teardown violated its terms of service, then canceled iFixit’s developer account and banned the app.
iFixit app also monitors iPhone batteries
Now the company is back in the App Store. The free iFixit app includes the following:
- All iFixit’s 100,000-plus repair guides, which cover a huge range of devices, from iPhones to cars.
- A workbench to keep track of repairs.
- A real-time battery health monitor.
- FixBot, an AI repair buddy with voice control.
The new iFixit app’s FixBot will guide users trying to repair iPhones, MacBooks, iPads and other devices. It will diagnose problems via pictures, text or voice, and help guide repairs verbally for hands-free use. Like any good chatbot, it can respond to questions.
It “actually knows what it’s talking about,” wrote Kyle Wiens, iFixit’s CEO, in a thread on X about the new app.
“FixBot is trained on 20 years of iFixit repairs,” he continued. “Millions of successful fixes. Real solutions that real people have verified actually work. Show it a photo of your problem. Tell it what’s wrong. It diagnoses like a master technician, then walks you through the fix step-by-step. Voice-guided, so your hands stay on the repair, not your screen.”
Wiens said FixBot adapts to the user’s skill level, helping novices with advice about screwdrivers or jumping to the meat of an issue if dealing with an expert.
“We spent over a year building a custom retrieval system that searches our entire library in seconds,” Wiens wrote in a separate blog post introducing FixBot. “And an evaluation harness that tests FixBot against thousands of real repair questions, so we catch the bad answers before you do.”
The amount of information crucial for DIY repairs that comes in the iFixit app sounds somewhat astonishing.
“We created a database with millions of pages of documentation; the data sheets and service manuals and specification tables that the rest of us only look at when we’re desperate,” Wiens wrote. “FixBot will find the right PDF manuals, look deep inside, and surface the answer on page 576. It’ll even cross-reference part numbers against your specific model.”
Future plans
FixBot is also available on the company’s website.
The iFixit app is free for now, but in the future, the company plans to charge advanced users.
A free tier will give users some access, but an Enthusiast plan aimed at frequent tinkerers will cost $4.99 a month or $50 a year, and offer voice and document uploads, the company said.
Download from: App Store.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
