Apple made the right decision when switching from traditional LCD display panels to higher-end OLED display panels in its flagship smartphones, but one can’t help but question why iOS doesn’t take better advantage of the deeper black color tones made possible with OLED display technology.
If you have a jailbroken OLED display-equipped iPhone at your disposal and you’ve been asking yourself the aforementioned question since the day you first picked up the device, then we think you’re likely to enjoy a free jailbreak tweak dubbed Lisa by iOS developers Litten and Esquilli.
As depicted in the screenshot examples above, Litten makes the Lock Screen a lot more OLED display-friendly in terms of incoming notification banners and the Now Playing widget that appears any time you begin listening to your favorite songs. The blacked out pixels contribute not only to battery savings in the long run, but also to a sleeker user interface.
The backbone of the Lisa tweak was originally created by iOS developer Esquilli for iOS 11 and 12, but was never updated with support for iOS 13 after Esquilli lost the motivation to continue updating the tweak. That’s something Litten wanted to change, which is the primary reason behind why we’re seeing this release at this time. That said, it’s not an entirely new tweak.
Credits and dues aside, those who install Lisa will find a dedicated preference pane in the Settings app post installation:
Here, you can:
- Toggle Lisa on or off on demand
- Customize Lisa
- Customize animations
- Customize haptic feedback
- Respring to save changes
- Reset all options to their defaults
- Send test notifications
- And more…
Digging a little deeper, this is what you can expect to find in the Customization pane:
Here, you can:
- Toggle customization on or off on demand
- Activate Lisa only when Do Not Disturb mode is turned on
- Activate Lisa when a notification arrives
- Activate Lisa whenever notifications are present
- Activate Lisa when playing music
- Hide the Status Bar
- Hide the Control Center indicator
- Hide the Face ID padlock glyph
- Hide the date and time
- Hide the Lock Screen Quick Actions
- Hide the Lock Screen’s unlock text
- Hide the Home Bar
- Hide the page dots
- Hide Complications (the jailbreak tweak, if installed)
- Hide Kai (the jailbreak tweak, if installed)
- Hide Aperio (the jailbreak tweak, if installed)
- Disable the Today page swipe
- Disable the Camera interface swipe
- Enable a blurred background
- Tap to dismiss Lisa
- Enable and configure the background alpha level
In the Animations preference pane, users can:
- Enable or disable animations
- Configure an animation speed in seconds via a slider
In the Haptic feedback preference pane, users can:
- Enable or disable haptic feedback
- Choose between light, medium, or strong haptic feedback
Whether or not you prefer the OLED display-friendly notifications and Now Playing widget depends strongly on the type of device you use and whether it sports an OLED display. It should be noted, however, that the tweak works on non-OLED-equipped handsets as well, but doesn’t look as incredible as it would on a handset capable of displaying true blacks with other colors.
Those interested in giving Lisa a try can download it for free from the Litten repository via their favorite package manager. The tweak supports jailbroken iOS 13 devices and is open source on the developer’s GitHub page.
If you aren’t already using Litten’s repository, then you can add it to your package manager of choice with the following URL:
https://repo.litten.love
Do you plan to try out the new Lisa tweak, or are you happy with how notifications come on a stock handset? Let us know your position in the comments section below.