How to Speed Up Cydia

One of the big downsides of Cydia is how slow it is. It usually takes a couple minutes from the time you launch Cydia to the time you can actually download something. Well, it doesn’t have to be that way anymore… There is a simple and quick trick that will incredibly speed up Cydia by removing ads and screenshots in each package.

That means you won’t see any ads anymore, but that also mean you won’t be able to see app screenshots. That’s something I’m willing to sacrifice if it can save me a few seconds here and there. Here is what to do to speed up Cydia

UPDATE: Some of you told me that this wasn’t a good solution because it breaks Cydia apps purchases, which was true. However, @DouglasBos from Twitter shared a new tweak with me that allows you to still improve Cydia’s speed while preserving your ability to purchase apps in Cydia. The steps are described below.

Step 1: SSH into your iPhone to /private/var/stash/Applications/Cydia.app

Step 2: Make a backup of the package.js, just to be on the safe side.

Step 3: Edit package.js and at around line 197 change the snippet of code to this 

var depiction = package.depiction;
if ((!commercial) && (depiction == null || true))
$(“.depiction”).addClass(“deleted”);
else {
$(“.description”).addClass(“deleted”);
$(“#depiction-src”).src(depiction);
}

Step 4: Reboot your iPhone

Now launch Cydia and you should see the speed has been considerably improved.

Now a bad hack, huh? If you try it, let us know how much speed you gained from this nice little trick.