
In all the years Iâve been jailbreaking iPhones and testing jailbreak tweaks, one classic has always stood out to me in particular, and that was Conrad Kramerâs famous Graviboard. Just as the name suggests, this tweak brought real gravitational physics to your handsetâs Home screen, causing all your app icons to fall in the direction of gravity.
Albeit released almost nine years ago, Graviboard was one of the coolest reasons to jailbreak an iPhone back in the day. Given the magnitude of the original tweakâs popularity, itâs unsurprising that there have been a few reincarnations since then. One of the most recent remakes to pay a viit to Cydia is Gravity by iOS developer Julio Verne.
In addition to invoking an ounce of nostalgia, Gravity lives up to its hype as an âalternative to Graviboard.â As shown in the screenshot example above, the tweak recreates the same (or similar) gravitational physics youâd expect from the near-decade-old classic.
But as you might come to expect, Gravity is configurable. Youâll find a preference pane in the Settings app where you can customize the tweak to your liking:

Here, you can:
- Toggle the tweak on or off on demand
- Allow the tweak to activate automatically
- Include the Dock icons
- Allow app launches while the tweak is active
- Enable icon rotation (to better simulate a fall)
- Hide the icon labels
- Adjust the fallâs âbouncinessâ
- Adjust the fallâs âfrictionâ
- Adjust the fallâs âangular resistanceâ
- Adjust the fallâs âfall speedâ
- Adjust the gravitational impact on the icons
- Adjust the accelerometerâs update interval
- Adjust the âexplosive forceâ
- Move icons by swiping on them
- Configure Activator actions:
- For toggling the effect
- For turning gravity on/off
- For toggling the explosion effect
- Reset all settings to their defaults
Thereâs obviously a lot of physics involved in developing a tweak of this caliber; that said, itâs nice how the preference pane isnât overly-complicated in that regard. Using basic terminology like âbounciness,â âfriction,â and âfall speedâ helps anyone (even those who arenât physics majors) to understand how theyâre configuring Gravity. Of course, trial and error tends to help too.
A quick note, however, is that the accelerometer is used to measure the motion that activates the gravitational effect. You can adjust the update interval of the accelerometer check, but do keep in mind that increasing this interval will negatively impact battery life as the software will tap into the sensor more frequently.
Unlike Graviboard and some of the reincarnates over the years, Gravity is a free download from Julio Verneâs beta repository in Cydia. If youâve always appreciated these tweaks and never had the dough to cough up for them, then hereâs your chance to snag it for free. Gravity works on all jailbroken devices running iOS 7-11 and is open source on the developer’s GitHub repository.
Are you happy to see a tweak like Gravity in this day and age of the jailbreak community? Discuss in the comments section below.