GesturesPlus: improve the pinch-to-close iOS 7 animation

Gestures Plus

If you’ve used Auxo 2, you’re probably aware of the interesting animation that occurs when closing an app using a swipe-up gesture from the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. The result is an animation that features all of the app icons on the Home screen zooming out in sync with the closing application.

This is the same pinch-to-close gesture that’s available on the iPad, and it’s only recently gaining significant notoriety on the iPhone due to Auxo’s slick implementation of it. In iOS 7.1, Apple changed the animation slightly to better represent an app’s presence in iOS’ three dimensional space, and GesturesPlus—a recently released tweak available for free on Cydia’s BigBoss repo—brings these changes to lesser firmware.

Admittedly, the function of this tweak is a bit difficult to explain in writing, so I encourage you to click past the break to watch the video  where I compare the animations before and after GesturesPlus is installed.

Once you install GesturesPlus, there are no options or settings to configure. On an iPad, you can perform a four or five-finger pinch in order to see the new animation in action. On the iPhone, you’ll need a tweak like Auxo 2 installed to allow you to perform the pinch-to-close gesture.

Personally, I never saw a real issue with the animation, but I guess I just didn’t paid enough attention to how awkward it actually is. I’m interested to hear what you think about GesturesPlus. Do you believe that the resulting animation, and iOS 7.1’s animation in general, makes more sense than the one present on iOS 7.0.x? Sound off in the comments below.