Does it annoy you a bit when you have a single notification present in Notification Center, yet you’re forced to pull down the entire Notification Center window to view the notification? That’s because notifications are pinned to the top on arrival, so even if you have just one notification to view, you must pull down the entire window to view it.
Pulling down the entire Notification Center window to view one notification pinned at the top can tire out your thumb, if you’re used to operating your iOS device single handily. NCEnough is a new jailbreak tweak that seeks to eliminate this finger fatigue, and it does so by adjusting the size of Notification Center based on the content contained within. Jump past the break for our full in-depth video hands-on.
Once you install NCEnough, you’ll be greeted with a new preferences panel in the stock Settings app. Inside the tweak’s preferences you’ll find a variety of settings for adjusting the way that Notification Center is displayed. The main option here is obviously the ability to adjust the size of Notification Center based on the content contained within it. This results in the ability to display Notification Center, and the full contents therein, with minimal effort. NCEnough can be enabled or disabled on the fly by means of a simple kill switch toggle located in its preferences.
The secondary options contained within NCEnough’s preferences allow you to always display the status bar below the Notification Center window, interact with the background, and darken the screen displayed beneath the Notification Center. As if those options weren’t enough to keep us busy, the developer lends tools to adjust the color and alpha settings for the Notification Center background, and the ability to make the pull down menu thinner (think iPad).
The most interesting of the tweak’s secondary features is the ability to interact with the background. Having background interactivity enabled allows you to interface with the area below Notification Center while Notification Center is opened. For instance, if I pull down the Notification Center menu while I’m on my Home screen, I can swipe pages on the Home screen, interact with Home screen app icons, etc. Keep in mind that this interactivity is nullified if you decide to use the tweak’s “Darken under NC” setting, which I mentioned above.
Another previously mentioned option, the ability to adjust the slenderness of the Notification Center window itself, showcases the developer’s sense of humor. With Settings such as Thin like a noodle and Supermodel, it’s bound to get a smile out of some. The being said, this setting’s usability is a bit questionable, since the thinner Notification Center breaks some widgets, and just isn’t very visually appealing in my opinion.
NCEnough’s main attraction — its ability to make Notification Center open with a responsive window — is a great feature that shouldn’t be overlooked. The extra features are a nice addition, but the primary purpose of the tweak makes it well worth its $0.99 price of admission. Head over to Cydia’s BigBoss repo to try it out, and let me know what you think about it down below.