Viper supercharges the Home & Lock Screens on jailbroken iPhones

While Apple does its best to keep the iPhone’s user interface simple by design, sometimes it takes things to such extremes that it actually handicaps the smartphone’s potential user experience. If you, like many others, wish your handset’s Home Screen and Lock Screen were a bit more capable, then you may want to do yourself a favor and look into the likes of a newly released jailbreak tweak dubbed Viper by iOS developer Esquilli.

Viper augments the iPhone’s Home Screen and Lock Screen interfaces in more ways than one. Not only does it bring interactive widgets to the Home Screen, but it also incorporates an App Drawer for faster app access and more informative Lock Screen interface with both Weather and time information. Examples of some of Viper’s features are depicted in the screenshot examples above and below.

Perhaps one of the first things you’ve noticed is the Weather and Time display at the top of both the Home Screen and the Lock Screen. This interface updates in real time as you’d come to expect.

Users can also take advantage of dedicated widgets, which are fully interactive and can be tailored to a custom Home Screen layout:

Viper also integrates an App Drawer to make accessing your favorite apps easier:

Viper is designed to seamlessly blend into all kinds of device setups. Whether you’re into theming or keeping things one-stock, Viper will look just as good on your device as it will on anyone else’s.

Once installed, Viper adds a dedicated preference pane to the Settings app where users can configure a number of options to their liking:

From the primary preference pane, users can:

  • Toggle Viper on or off on demand
  • Configure the Viper App Drawer
  • Configure Viper Events
  • Configure Viper’s General Customization
  • Configure Viper’s General Settings
  • Configure the Viper Lock Screen
  • Configure Weather and Time Styles
  • Configure Weather and Time Formatting
  • Tinker with the layout editor
  • Reset preferences to their defaults
  • Respring to save any changes made

We’ll outline all the features for each individual section below:

App Drawer

In the App Drawer preference pane, users can:

  • Toggle the App Drawer on or off on demand
  • Hide or show app icon labels
  • Automatically display the keyboard to search
  • Enable a Dock gesture
  • Choose an invoke gesture
    • None
    • Swipe up, bottom left
    • Swipe up, bottom right
  • Configure an Activator action

Events

In the Events preference pane, users can:

  • Include Calendar events in the Up Next widget
  • Include Reminders events in the Up Next widget
  • Choose the calendars you want to use
    • Birthdays
    • Calendar
    • Siri Suggestions
    • US Holidays
  • Configure a time ahead for fetching events:
    • 1 Day
    • 7 Days
    • 1 Month
    • 3 Months

General Customization

In the General Customization preference pane, users can:

  • Choose a widget background style:
    • Adaptive
    • Custom
    • Chameleon
  • Enable a blur effect
  • Choose a background color
  • Choose a widget text type:
    • Adaptive
    • Custom
    • Chameleon
  • Color app elements
  • Choose a custom text color

General Settings

In the General Settings preference pane, users can:

  • Enable custom layout
  • Choose a default media player
  • Choose a gesture for interacting with widgets:
    • Single tap
    • Force Press

Lock Screen

In the Lock Screen preference pane, users can:

  • Enable or disable the Viper clock
  • Enable OLED mode
  • Choose the number of taps needed to dismiss OLED mode:
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3

Weather and Time

Here, users can configure both Style and Formatting. In the Style preference pane users, can:

  • View a live preview of their changes
  • Enable or disable main label custom styling
  • Configure a size
  • Choose a font style:
    • Thin
    • Light
    • Regular
    • Medium
    • Bold
  • Enable rounded format
  • Enable secondary labels custom styling
  • Configure a size
  • Choose a font style:
    • Thin
    • Light
    • Regular
    • Medium
    • Bold
  • Enable rounded format
  • Enable or disable font picker and choose a custom font

In the Formatting preference pane, users can:

  • Enable and configure a custom time format
  • Enable and configure a custom date format
  • Enable and configure a secondary time format
  • Enable and configure a secondary date format
  • Enable and configure a secondary time zone

To say Viper offers incredible value for the price would be an understatement. One of our favorite parts about the tweak is that it offers a little something for every interface with interact with most, including the Home Screen and the Lock Screen — rather than being a one-off tweak, it packs a lot of functionality into a single package.

If you’re looking to get more out of your pwned iPhone, then the tweak is available as a $2.99 purchase from the Chariz repository via your favorite package manager. Viper supports jailbroken iOS 13 devices.

What are your thoughts about what Viper brings the table? Let us know in the comments section below.