Unclutter your Lock screen’s Now Playing widget with Clean Player

As you listen to music on your iPhone or iPad, your device displays an interactive Now Playing widget on the Lock screen so that you can view information about what’s playing and control your music playback. On the other hand, some people would argue that the widget shows more controls than it needs to.

Clean Player is a new free jailbreak tweak by iOS developers Easy-Z and CloudDev that aims to resolve this problem by providing users with the ability to configure what does and doesn’t appear in the Now Playing widget.

Once installed, users will find a preference pane in the Settings app where they can configure a number of options on demand:

Here, you can:

  • Hide or show the start and end time labels
  • Hide or show the time slider
  • Hide or show the AirPlay button
  • Configure a custom platter background color via a color picker

The developer provides a Respring button at the bottom of the preference pane for your convenience, and you’ll do good to use it every time you make changes to the settings to ensure that your options are appended to your device.

Whether Clean Player is a worthwhile install for your jailbroken device or not comes down to how you feel about minimalism and where you draw the line. Personally, I can do without the AirPlay button when listening to music, but I like seeing the time indicators because it gives me a better idea about when my song will end. On the other hand, your mileage may vary.

If you’re interested in trying Clean Player, then you can download it for free from Cydia’s Packix repository. The tweak supports all jailbroken iOS 11 and 12 devices.

What parts of the Now Playing interface in iOS would you like to hide? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.