Nereid offers a pleasant upgrade for the Lock screen’s Now Playing interface

iOS’ native Now Playing interface is good enough for most people, but if you demand more out of your user experience than the average Joe and have a jailbroken iPhone or iPad in your possession, then you may want to feast your eyes on a newly-released jailbreak tweak called Nereid by iOS developer Nepeta.

From what we can gather, Nereid brings an improved Now Playing interface to your handset’s Lock screen as you listen to your music. It can set your wallpaper as the Now Playing track’s album artwork, permit color and control customizations, and much more.

In the screenshot examples above, you’ll notice right off the bat that the wallpaper has been set as the Now Playing track’s album artwork. You may have also discerned the additional control options, which include rewind/skip 15 seconds, shuffle, and repeat.

At the bottom of the first screenshot (on the left), you’ll see what appears to be a Mitsuha Infinity audio visualizer, and it’s worth noting that Nepeta has also just released a Lock screen-centric version of Mitsuha Infinity (which is also free) that’s specifically designed to play nicely with Nereid.

Upon installing Nereid, you’ll find a dedicated preference pane in the Settings app where you can configure the tweak to your liking:

Here, you can:

  • Choose your preferred color option for Nereid:
    • Automatic
    • Default
    • Dynamic
    • Custom
  • Choose a custom color if Custom was selected
  • Colorize the Lock screen’s date and time alongside the Nereid interface
  • Enable or disable artwork as the wallpaper
  • Hide or show the elapsed and remaining time text
  • Hide the volume bar
  • Remove the album’s name from the interface
  • Hide or show the circle around the play/pause button
  • Replace icons
  • Swap the artist name and title
  • Adjust the album artwork blur radius
  • Adjust the album artwork darkening
  • Choose the album artwork mode:
    • Scale to fit
    • Shrink to fit
  • Configure a custom background color
  • Configure the button that you’d like to appear on the left and right side of the interface:
    • Disabled
    • Shuffle
    • Repeat
    • Rewind 15 seconds
    • Skip 15 seconds
  • Reset all options to their defaults

The developer provides a respring button in the preference pane for your convenience, and you should use it whenever you make changes to ensure they’re appended to your device.

Out of all the tweak’s features, we especially appreciate the dynamic album artwork-centric wallpaper feature and the additional controls, but we’re sure some people will also appreciate the theming options and ability to hide/switch information around for a cleaner aesthetic.

If you’re interested in trying Nereid, then you can download it for free from Nepeta’s repository in either Cydia or Sileo. Notably, Mitsuha Infinity – Lock Screen is also available for free from the same repository. Both tweaks play nicely with all jailbroken iOS 11 and 12 devices, and Nereid is open-source on the developer’s GitHub page for those interested in learning more about what makes the tweak tick.

Will you be grabbing Nereid? Let us know why or why not in the comments section below!