Translucency lets your wallpaper bleed slightly through the Cydia app’s background

Cydia typically exhibits a white background, much like most other apps that come bundled with iOS, but a new free jailbreak tweak dubbed Translucency by iOS developer EthanRDoesMC gives the app a makeover.

Once installed, Translucency allows faint colors from your Home screen wallpaper to bleed through the back of the Cydia interface.

Above, you can see how this effect looks on the Cydia home page; below, the same effect appears for a jailbreak tweak depiction page:

The tweak looks okay on iPhones, but I think it looks much nicer on iPads, where the larger screen real estate enables the tweak to have a more pronounced effect on the app:

Translucency puts a preference pane in the Settings app where you can mess with some options:

Here, you can:

  • Toggle the translucency effects on or off on demand
  • Enable the effect individually for the home page
  • Enable the effect individually for the log view
  • Enable the effect individually for the tweak depictions page
  • Enable an experimental effect for all UIViews

For the smoothest results, you can close the Cydia app from the App Switcher and restart it after making changes to the Settings to ensure your changes take effect.

Your results and appreciation for the tweak may vary depending on the wallpaper you’re using. I’ve found that colorful wallpapers, like those on stock devices, seem to look best with the translucent effects.

More importantly, the developer is reportedly working on adding system-wide support so that all apps on your device can exhibit this translucent effect. This will come in a future update; however, there’s no ETA just yet for when that might happen.

If you’re interested in trying Translucency, you can download it for free from Cydia’s BigBoss repository. The tweak works on jailbroken iOS 10 devices.

Do you like the effects of Translucency on the Cydia app? Share why or why not in the comments below!