GrayKey Says It Can Freeze the iPhone's 72-Hour Reboot

A video obtained by 404 Media shows Magnet Forensics pitching a way to hold a seized iPhone in a readable state. The company’s new device is called GrayKey Preserve, and its existing GrayKey units get a setting called Evidence Preservation Mode. Magnet makes GrayKey, the unlocking tool sold to law enforcement agencies, including agencies in authoritarian countries.

What those tools claim to freeze is the inactivity reboot. Apple introduced it quietly in November 2024: an iPhone that has not been unlocked for 72 hours restarts, reverting to a state that makes forensic extraction harder. Three days of sitting untouched was the whole trigger, and the phone did that on its own, with no notice to anyone.

Law enforcement complained when the feature appeared, and their reason is the interesting part. Seized phones often sit while police wait on a court authorization or work through a backlog of devices. Seventy-two hours is roughly the shape of that queue: a warrant does not arrive in an afternoon, and a property room does not clear itself.

So the timer was doing its work in the window where police work is slowest. If Magnet’s claim holds, a phone stays in the softer state for as long as the paperwork takes, and the reboot stops being a deadline a lab has to beat. That would be a real change. The evidence is a promotional video, which is advertising.

I have liked the inactivity reboot since I learned it existed. My phone restarts itself every few days whether I notice or not, and that felt like a rare iOS default quietly on my side. It asked nothing of me. I still like it; I just know the size of the win now — a default, not a defense.

Nothing about the reboot was advertised, configured, or explained to the person carrying the phone. It bought time, and not much of it, and it kept working whether anyone appreciated it or not. What stands between a lab and the data is the passcode, which is the part that still has to be broken rather than waited out.

Skip it if you were never counting on the timer for anything. The picture Magnet is drawing is narrow: a phone in a bag on a property-room shelf, powered on, clock stopped. The one action worth taking is small. Power the phone off before it leaves the house, and it drops into the state the reboot was reaching for anyway.