If you’re looking for a way to significantly change the experience with the stock Music app, then you need to check out Aria, a new jailbreak tweak recently released on Cydia. Aria is a $1.99 release that’s available on the BigBoss repo, and it allows you to use a stylish grid interface to display albums and artists.
Along with the interface changes, come more practical ideas. For example, you can add songs to your up-next queue using simple tap and hold gestures. But that’s not all that Aria is capable of doing. Check out our full video walkthrough after the break for a look into what makes this tweak so interesting.
Once you install Aria, you will find a new preference panel in the stock Settings app dedicated to the tweak. Aria’s preferences contain the standard kill-switch—a feature that requires a respring—along with several additional panels for altering the look and feel of the stock Music app.
The most significant visual change that Aria brings to the table—the grid based views—can be found in the artist and album view panels in its preferences. There, you can enable or disable the grid views along with other minor visual alterations.
The now-playing panel lets users change the look of the now-playing interface. You can choose to ditch the standard look of the interface for a dark tinted view based on the now-playing album art. If you ask me, this is one of the best changes that Aria brings to the table.
Aria allows users to do some additional things like resume a now-playing queue, or continuing to play in shuffle mode after the final track of an album has completed. But, to me at least, the best thing about this tweak from a functionality perspective is the ability to alter your up-next queue. It’s based on the same principals found in the full-sized desktop version of iTunes, and on an earlier released jailbreak tweak called Cyueue.
As we mentioned earlier, Aria is a $1.99 jailbreak release available now on Cydia. If you’re a big fan of the stock Music app, then I highly recommend that you give it a look. After doing so, let me know what you think about it in the comments below.