Cydia updated for iOS 7

Cydia iOS 7

Ladies and gentlemen, the much anticipated Cydia 1.1.9 update for iOS 7 is out right now, and it looks good. We have a full video walkthrough in the works, but for now, head over to Cydia to find the upgrade to the Cydia installer and UIKit, and have at it. The tab bar icons were designed by Surenix, the UI Icons were made by Kyle Matthews, and it looks ridiculously good.

Saurik explains the reasoning and work involved with the updated version of Cydia, and it’s impressive:

Due to evasi0n 7 having been released with an unofficial build of “Cydia”, I had to upgrade Cydia via a package. This is more complex, as packages I release in my repository have to work for all users, not just those on the latest firmware. I have managed to get Cydia 1.1.9 working on iOS 2-7.

The fact that he was able to maintaining compatibility back all the way to iPhoneOS 2.x is crazy. That no doubt had to take a ton of work and regression testing in order to pull off properly. For that very reason, Saurik explains that there may be some underlying issues that still need fixing:

Please understand that there are still some things about this build that are “not quite right” (including the dropbar, which I want to have work like the iTunes Store’s song preview bar, but right now is simply broken). I needed to get this out so I could move to Substrate, and thereby kind of hacked that together.

So in other words, most of your basic functionality should work without many issues, but there are still some features and fixes that Saurik wishes to implement in a future Cydia update.

Cydia iOS 7 update

Saurik goes on too thank Surenix for the new tab bar icons, Kyle Matthews for the UI images (I wrongly credited this to Surenix in the video, my mistake), and Ryan Petrich for the general UIKit help, and Optimo for testing.

Along with the updates to the Cydia Installer comes a mandatory update to UIKit Tools. The UIKit Tools is a package that contains a collection of command line tools providing access to features of the SpringBoard. You must install the updated version of UIKit Tools along with Cydia Installer for everything to work as it should.

Cydia iOS 7 iPad
The iPad version of Cydia for iOS 7

With all of the drama surrounding the sudden and unexpected release of the iOS 7 jailbreak, things are beginning to go back to normal. Cydia is updated, Mobile Substrate is in the works, and awesome developers like Ryan Petrich are finishing iOS 7 updates to their tweaks and apps. All again feels a bit normal in the world when it comes to jailbreaking.

You can find the updated version of Cydia Installer and UIKit Tools on Saurik’s very own Cydia/Telesphoreo repo. The download, is, of course, free of charge, and should be used by all who are currently jailbroken on iOS 7. Let us know what you think about the new Cydia in the comments below. And check back here shortly for the full video walkthrough and details.