Velox: an upcoming tweak that lets you interact with app icons to check notifications and more

By Jeff Benjamin on Apr 8, 2013

Velox is an upcoming jailbreak tweak that I’ve had my eye on for months. I’ve been anticipating the release of this tweak for a very long time, because I think it has the potential to make a huge impact on the jailbreak community.

Rarely does a jailbreak tweak come along that has the capability to change the way that you use your device. A very exclusive number of tweaks belong to that group, and Velox has the potential to crash the party.

Yes, Velox is in the same hemisphere, and it contains, perhaps even more long term potential than Auxo. That’s because it’s a completely different type of tweak that can interact with multiple apps, and features its own API for extended development.

Primarily, Velox is a tweak that allows you to interact with apps on your Home screen in order to check notifications without opening Notification Center. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Velox also features custom “folders” that can be individually tailored for specific apps. Each of these folders can be accessed using a simple swipe up or swipe down gesture on the app icon that you wish to interact with.

What does this mean? It means that if I swipe up on the Settings app, a folder containing settings toggles is revealed. It means that if I swipe down on the Camera app, the camera is revealed in a folder right there on my Home screen. Trust me, reading these words just doesn’t do it justice; you have to see it in action to really appreciate the potential here. Thankfully, I’ve got an exclusive hands-on video to showcase how it works… Read More

 

How to set any springboard page as a default page

By Jeff Benjamin on Mar 17, 2013

DefaultSBPage is a brand new jailbreak tweak, and it does something fairly awesome. It allows you to select a default Home screen page to land on once your iPhone is unlocked.

Say you have a particular page dedicated to an often used selection of apps; well, instead of having to swipe over to that page every time you unlock your iPhone, you can set that page as the default page. This will force the iPhone to open directly to the page you utilize the most.

As you can probably tell, DefaultSBPage is an extremely simple tweak in function, but it provides some serious utility. Take a look inside for our full video walkthrough, which showcases it in action. Read More

 

‘LivePapers’ adds animated wallpaper to jailbroken devices

By Jeff Benjamin on Feb 26, 2013

Looking to spice up your iPhone’s Home screen and Lock screen? If so, then look no further than LivePapers, a recently released jailbreak app available on Cydia’s BigBoss repo.

LivePapers allows you to enable animated wallpaper that you can display on both your Home screen and Lock screen. You can interact with the wallpaper on your Lock screen using taps, and configure settings for each of the custom wallpapers.

By itself, LivePapers isn’t exactly a home run, but with the purchasable addons, the jailbreak app is tons of fun. Take a look inside as we go in depth with LivePapers, plus we’ll talk about and demonstrate its purchasable addon packs. Read More

 

Dashboard X 2.0 makes adding widgets to your Home screen even easier

By Jeff Benjamin on Jul 22, 2012

The original Dashboard X was a fairly monumental tweak for jailbroken iOS devices, because it brought true widgets to the iPhone and iPad’s Home screen.

Dashboard X 2.0, the follow up to the hit release, is aiming to build on all of the things the original Dashboard X did well, while fixing the things it didn’t do so well.

This time around you can resize widgets using pinch gestures, and you can position widgets on both portrait and landscape orientations independently of one another.

Simply put, this is an awesome follow up to an already great jailbreak tweak. Check inside for the full video walkthrough… Read More

 

Homescreen.me lets you share your iOS device setup with the world

By Cody Lee on Jul 20, 2012

The stock Home screen in iOS looks pretty boring. Luckily, jailbreaking can change that. It opens the door to a whole world of customization, including tweaks, icon packages and tons of other theming possibilities.

And if you like customizing your device, and want to share your iPad or iPhone setup with the world, there’s a new service that lets you do that. Homescreen.me finally came out of private beta this week… Read More

 

The One and Only Screen On My iPhone

By Sebastien Page on Feb 4, 2012

When I wrote about my top 10 jailbreak tweaks last week, many of you were surprised not to see Springtomize 2 on the list. As I explained in the comments, Springtomize was not on the list because it hadn’t been really optimized to work properly on the iPhone 4S, which ended up causing me a bunch of troubles.

But this is now behind us as Springtomize was updated yesterday. It is more stable, and even brings its insane level of customization to the iPad.

In association with some of my favorite tweaks like InfiniFolders and InfiniDock, I was able to use Springtomize to create my ideal home screen… Read More

 

Easily Exit Wiggle Mode With TapDeWiggle

By Jeff Benjamin on Jan 6, 2012

Have a broken Home button, or just to lazy to use it? If so, then you may want to give TapDeWiggle a shot.

TapDeWiggle is a jailbreak tweak that allows you to exit the iPhone’s edit mode — a.k.a. “wiggle mode” — by tapping any blank spot on your Home screen.

To see it in action, check inside for our video analysis… Read More

 

Motion Adds Visual Mayhem to Your iPhone’s Home Screen

By Jeff Benjamin on Jan 2, 2012

Motion is a new jailbreak tweak that can seriously spice up your iPhone’s Home screen, if you’re into that sort of thing. The tweak does this by adding quite a few animation options to the app icons on your Home screen.

Best of all, Motion clocks in at a reasonable $1 on the Cydia Store. Should you try it out? Check out our hands-on video inside and judge for yourselves… Read More

 

How to Save Favorites Notes to Your Home Screen With SBStickyNotes

By Jeff Benjamin on Dec 29, 2011

The Notes app is a great app for saving quick items that you need to get back to later, but often it’s easy to forget that you wrote anything down in the first place.

With SBStickyNotes, forgetting just became a tad more difficult. That’s because this tweak allows you to save favorite notes to you Home screen as a bookmark.

We’ve gone hands-on with SBStickyNotes on video; check inside to view the full walkthrough… Read More

 

Bring Infinite Swiping to Your iPhone’s Home Screen with ‘Wraparound’

By Jeff Benjamin on Jun 19, 2011

It’s time to add another entry to the, “why didn’t Apple think about that?” list.

Introducing: Wraparound — a jailbreak tweak for the iPhone that allows you to scroll indefinitely on your Home screen.

Normally when you reach your last page of apps, you’re restricted from going any further. With Wraparound installed, this restriction is a thing of the past.

Instead of reaching a dead end on your iPhone’s Home screen, you’ll be rerouted back to the Spotlight page for another go ’round, and you can do so until your fingers get tired of swiping… Read More

 

‘Homescreen Settings’ Adds Settings App Shortcuts to Your Home Screen

By Jeff Benjamin on Jun 19, 2011

Homescreen Settings is the type of innovative tweak that doesn’t come around too often, but when it does, you wonder, what took so long?

It’s one of those, “well, duh!” tweaks that leave you scratching you head as to why it hasn’t been done before.

That’s what I love about the jailbreak community, because no matter how far we think the developers have pushed the envelope, they continue to amaze us with their work.

Homescreen Settings is just that, an amazing tweak, and worth every cent of its $1.99 asking price. It allows you to place any, literally, any settings panel onto your iPhone’s Home screen as a quick and convenient shortcut.

Not convinced? Check inside and be convinced… Read More

 

Web App Performance in iOS 5 Greatly Improved

By Alex Heath on Jun 18, 2011

Web app performance in iOS 4 has been disappointing. It’s been speculated that Apple has been intentionally handicapping web app performance in iOS 4. When websites are launched from the iPhone’s homescreen, loading times become much longer than when a site is opened straight from the Mobile Safari app.

In iOS 5, it’s been discovered that fullscreen web apps from the homescreen can access the Nitro Javascript engine that sped up Mobile Safari in iOS 4.3. These “dynamic-codesigning” privileges allow for a much faster web app experience in iOS 5.

Read More

 

How to Maintain Homescreen Organization When Restoring Your iPhone

By Alex Heath on May 18, 2011

We’ve all been there; your iPhone gets restored and you lose all of the app folders and page customization you spent months tweaking to perfection. Even when you restore from a backup, you lose your homescreen customization.

There’s actually a nifty iTunes trick that will allow you to regain your previous homescreen customization after an iOS restore. For jailbreakers, it isn’t that easy… Read More

 

RecognizeMe Allows for Biometric Facial Recognition on a Jailbroken iPhone

By Alex Heath on May 18, 2011

In case you needed one more reason to jailbreak your iPhone, try this on for size: biometric facial recognition. Instead of unlocking your iPhone with a simple password (How boring is that?), you can use the iPhone 4′s front-facing camera to scan and recognize your face.

RecognizeMe is a new jailbreak app that helps make your iPhone safe from shady characters and potential homescreen peekers. By matching your face to a pre-defined database, RecognizeMe will unlock your iPhone and give you access to your device. Read More

 

How to Speed Up Web Apps on the iPhone

By Alex Heath on Mar 31, 2011

In iOS 4.3, Apple has supposedly limited the speed of web apps added to the iPhone’s home screen. Develepors and users have been reporting that web-based applications launched from an independent springboard icon are loading more than 2x slower than sites opened in Mobile Safari.

Meaning that, web apps/favorite sites launched from an icon shortcut aren’t given any access to the Nitro Javascript engine that’s baked into iOS 4.3. If Apple has intentionally hampered the performance of web apps in 4.3, such a move could been seen as a subliminal push to get people downloading more App Store apps.

If you’ve noticed lagging performance with your favorite web apps in iOS 4.3, there’s an easy way to take advantage of Mobile Safari’s full resources… Read More

 

Apple is Testing Gesture-Based LockScreen for iOS

By Alex Heath on Feb 28, 2011

Apple is reportedly testing an Android-like lockscreen for the next major version of iOS. Google’s Android OS has a gesture-based “dots” lockscreen that allows users to unlock their phone by highlighting the dots in a pre-established pattern.

Apparently, Apple is borrowing from Android’s lockscreen concept and including it in a future version of iOS. There have been complaints that the current iOS lockscreen is not secure enough, and there have been numerous ways of bypassing the iPhone’s 4-digit password…

Read More

 

Internally Leaked Screenshots Confirming Multitouch Gestures in iOS 4.3

By Alex Heath on Jan 20, 2011

It looks as though the iPad won’t be the only one to get the new multitouch gestures unearthed in the iOS 4.3 beta. Boy Genius has released some iPhone screenshots that are claimed to come from internal testing at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino.

We recently reported on the rumor that the next major version of the iPhone would have no home button. Instead, it was supposed that iOS would use multitouch gestures (two, three, four fingers, etc.) to replace the functionality of the home button.

This new report seems to support the theory of no home button on the iPhone 5. Apparently, Apple has been testing multitouch gestures on the iPhone (there is nothing to clarify if the screenshots are associated with new hardware) internally for quite some time…

Read More

 

Rumor: Apple Will Remove the Home Button in the Next Version of the iPhone

By Alex Heath on Jan 13, 2011

A new, unexpected report from Boy Genius is claiming that the next version of the iPhone and iPad will have no home button. That’s right, a device with hardly any physical buttons will lose its only major one. This rumor doesn’t seem unlike Apple, we are talking about a company who took all of the buttons off the iPod Nano at one point.

It seems that the reason multitouch gestures were added to the iPad in iOS 4.3 is because Apple plans to implement such gestures for all iDevices. These multi-finger gestures would most likely replace the current functionality of the home button. Boy Genius Report reveals the following… Read More

 

Easily Switch Springboard Configurations with BackBoard for iPhone

By Alex Heath on Jan 4, 2011

One of the biggest cons of jailbreaking has always been how difficult it is to restore a jailbroken iPhone’s settings and configuration. If you ever need to restore iOS or upgrade/downgrade to a different iOS version, there is no clear way to easily restore your iPhone’s (both jailbreak and general) configuration.

BackBoard is a new jailbreak app that aims to help you save your iPhone’s springboard/home screen configuration. There are other apps, like PkgBackup, that help you back up your jailbreak apps and settings; but BackBoard has some different features that make it appealing…

Read More

 

New Tweak Adds a Spiral of Apps to Your iPhone

By Sebastien Page on Dec 13, 2010

IconSpiral is a new tweak by the developer of Barrel. Just like the name suggests, IconSpiral creates a spiral our of your apps icons on your iPhone home screen. This tweak is still in its beta infancy, so don’t expect to get something fully stable.

In order to get this tweak on your iPhone, you will first have to submit your UDID via this page. Make sure you read the warning and understand all the risks. Once you have submitted your UDID, add the following repo to Cydia: http://aaron.ms/repo/ … Read More

 
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