Semperon adds an ‘always-on-display’ to your jailbroken iPhone

A plethora of Android smartphones on the market today support ‘always-on-display’ functionality in which the background remains dark, but the time and date appear in legible white font for your convenience.

Until now, you couldn’t experience this effect on an Apple handset, but a new jailbreak tweak dubbed Semperon by iOS developer LaughingQuoll mimics this functionality on any jailbroken iPhone or iPad running iOS 11.

The screenshots above depict what your locked device’s display will look like after installing Semperon. It will continuously look this way whether you’re interacting with the handset or not, hence the “always-on” aspect.

The tweak automatically shifts the time from the top of the display to the bottom, and back again, after a certain amount of time; this feature combats screen burn-in, an adverse side-effect that often results from having the same thing showing on your display for too long.

After you’ve installed Semperon, you’ll find a preference pane in the Settings app:

Here, you can:

  • Toggle the tweak on or off on demand
  • Hide or show the Status Bar
  • Hide or show the Clock face
  • Hide or show notification dot indicators for missed notifications
  • Hide or show notification icons for apps with missed notifications
  • Configure behavior during Low Power Mode
  • Toggle burn-in protection on or off
  • Select a display brightness level for the always-on functionality
  • Center the Status Bar on the display
  • Configure tap to wake options
  • Configure quick action buttons for the flashlight and camera
  • And much more…

The developer includes a Respring button for your convenience so that you can save changes to the preference pane each time you make them.

If you’re considering trying Semperon, then keep in mind that an always-on-display uses more battery life. The drain is less profound on the iPhone X because of the nature of dark colors on OLED displays, but LCD-equipped iPhones will see a more drastic impact. The tweak mitigates battery drain by automatically dimming the backlight whenever possible.

As for the functionality, the always-on display comes in handy because you always have a display to glance at when you want to know what time it is, and it gets dim enough that it won’t keep you up at night.

If you’re interested in trying Semperon for yourself, then you can download it for $1.99 from Cydia’s Packix repository. The tweak requires a jailbroken iOS 11 device to be used and will not work with FastUnlockX or similar add-ons.

Note: After you install Semperon, you’ll also need to manually install two dependencies from Cydia: 1) libSparkAppList and 2) PrefixUI. Citing the developer, these aren’t installed automatically because of an APT bug present in this version of Cydia on iOS 11.

What are your thoughts about having an always-on-display on your iPhone? Let us know in the comments section below.