Tutorials

SNES (HD): Super Nintendo Emulator for Jailbroken iPad

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated October 10, 2018

Most of us with jailbroken iPhones are already familiar with the PlayStation, Game Boy, Nes and Super Nes emulators, those hacks that bring our favorite old games to the iPhone or iPod Touch.

Because bigger is better, now comes SNES (HD), a Super Nintendo emulator for iPad and controlled with an iPhone. Don't need to read this previous sentence again because I'm going to repeat it for you: SNES (HD) is a Super Nintendo emulator for iPad that allows you to play any Super Nes game and control them with your iPhone.

SNES (HD) is an iPad port of the popular Super Nintendo emulator Snes9x. It is based on ZodTTD’s iPhone port snes4iphone but it has been rewritten for the iPad.

How to install the SNES (HD) Super Nes emulator on your iPad

Step 1: Your iPad and iPhone must be jailbroken. If it's not, jailbreak them. At the time this article is written, Spirit is the best way to jailbreak your iPad and iPhone.

Step 2: In Cydia, add the following source to your iPad and iPhone: http://wherethewoozlewasnt.com/cydia. SNES (HD) should be released in the ModMyI repo soon but for the moment, you will need to add this source manually.

Step 3: Once the source has been added, install SNES (HD) on your iPad and ControlPad on your iPhone.

Step 4: Now you need to add Super Nintendo ROMs to your iPad in /var/mobile/Media/ROMs/SNES. The best way to add ROMs is by using WinSCP for Windows or CyberDuck for Mac. If you don't have any Super Nintendo ROMs in there, you obviously won't be able to do anything. For legal reasons I cannot tell you where to find ROMs but a quick Google search with right keywords should get you what you're looking for.

Step 5: Make sure bluetooth is enabled on both your iPhone and iPad. Launch SNES (HD) on your iPad and ControlPad on your iPhone.

Step 6: Your iPad and iPhone will start looking for each other. After about a minute, "Tap to Connect" will pop up on your iPhone. Tap on the entry for your iPad, and in a second the iPad will display an “Accept/Deny” screen. Hit "accept" and you’ll be connected.

Step 7: Select a ROM from the list of ROMs available (it depends on how many you added) and enjoy your Super Nes emulator for iPad.

100% credit for this goes to the developer of SNES (HD) and his blog Where the woozle wasn't. I simply made the instructions clearer and easier.

This Super Nintendo emulator for iPad is free but the developer accepts donations. If you're going to use SNES (HD) that'd be nice if you could send him a few bucks by visiting his site and hitting the "donate" button.

If you're still on the fence about installing SNES (HD) on your iPad, watch this video.

Android on iPhone 3G Now Available

Sébastien Page ∙ May 24, 2010

A couple of weeks ago, iPhone hacker PlanetBeing showed us a demo of Android running on an iPhone 3G. This week, he posted full instructions on how to install Android on an iPhone 3G.

In all honesty, I can't see why one would want to install this on the iPhone besides the thrill of the technical challenge. At this time, this port of Android is highly unstable.

Although this port does everything that you expect your smartphone to be able to do, it isn't usable for day-to-day activities just yet--I haven't implemented any power-management functions, so a fully charged iPhone running Android will last only an hour or so.

A few bugs and performance issues remain, too, so while the phone will be usable, it won't be fast. If you do something unexpected (such as forcing the iPhone off), there is a small chance that you may end up restoring your device. However, it is impossible for any bugs to brick or disable your iPhone permanently.

Finally, media syncing is not working, so loading your media onto your phone is kind of a pain. I'm working as hard as I can, though, and I expect to fix these issues soon.

PlanetBeing posted full instructions explaining how to install a port of Android on your iPhone.

If you don't have the required setup or feel a little scared by the instructions, you may want to give a try to iPhoDroid, by Sergio McFly.

iPhoDroid is an app that will make your life much easier. It will automatically transfer all the necessary files to run Android on your iPhone. The other advantage of iPhoDroid is that it is developed for Mac, which means you won't need a Linux machine like you would if you followed PlanetBeing's "manual" instructions.

If any of you dare taking a shot at installing Android on your lovely device, I would love to hear about your experience.

How to Customize Your iPhone With Themes

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated February 5, 2016

In this article, I would like to show you how to customize your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch by adding a theme to it. This is a very simple thing to do.

The most advanced readers of this blog will most likely see this as old news but not everyone is an iPhone expert and I've been getting the same questions a lot lately:

how can I customize my icons? how can I add a theme to my SMS application? how can I add a wallpaper to my springboard? etc...

By default, your iPhone is not very customizable. Sure you can add a wallpaper to the lockscreen, but that's about it. iPhone OS 4 will give you more options and will allow you to also add a wallpaper to your springboard, but that's still not enough to many of us who wish to customize our iDevices from head to toes.

Thankfully, the jailbreak community is here to take over where Apple stopped.

Theming your iPhone is very easy. Follow these simple steps and you should be good to go in 10 minutes.

Step 1: Jailbreaking

The very first step is to have a jailbroken iPhone (or iPad, or iPod Touch). I understand that "jailbreaking" can sound intimidating, especially for those of you who aren't very technical people. But jailbreaking is a fairly simple and safe process.

For more information about jailbreaking, I suggest you read about what jailbreaking is and why jailbreak your iPhone.

If you haven't been discouraged yet, then it's time for action! There are various methods for jailbreaking your device, depending on the model and the software version.

At the time I am writing this, the latest iPhone firmware is 3.1.3 and can be jailbroken with a tool called Spirit in less then 1 minute (see Spirit tutorial here).

To make sure you are using the latest jailbreak available, please visit this page and search for your device model and firmware version, then use the relevant jailbreak tool.

After jailbreaking your iPhone, you will have a new application called "Cydia" on your spingboard. Cydia is like the App Store for jailbreak apps.

Once you have jailbroken your iPhone, we can go to the next step.

Step 2: Install WinterBoard

In Cydia (the new app that was installed when you jailbroke your iDevice), search for WinterBoard.

WinterBoard is an application available for jailbroken iPhones and idevices only. This application allows you to download themes and to activate and manage them on your iPhone.

Once you have located the application, install it. It should take no more than a few seconds. After installing WinterBoard, I suggest you reboot your device.

Step 3: Find and Activate Themes

Now that we have installed our theme manager WinterBoard, we need to find themes. This is probably the hardest part of the job because there are hundreds, if not thousands of themes available.

To search for a theme, go to Cydia > Sections > Themes. You will notice there are sections for specific themes such as battery themes, keyboard themes, etc, but I just want to focus on the essential.

There are themes for every tastes: bands, cars, celebrities, colorful, abstract, etc... Chances are if you're looking for something specific, you will find it.

Not all themes are equal. Some themes only include a wallpaper, some include full customization with battery, dock, icons, dialer, keyboard, SMS, and more. Again, you will have to spend some time browsing to find the right theme for you.

Once you found a theme, simply install it in Cydia, then go back to WinterBoard to activate the theme. In WinterBoard, go to "Select Themes" and select the theme you just downloaded.

Close WinterBoard and wait for your iPhone to respring.

You're done! Your iPhone or iDevice is now customized.

Once you're more familiar with themes and WinterBoard, don't hesitate to explore more themes and the various options of WinterBoard. You can customize virtually every aspect of your iPhone, iTouch, or iPad.

Happy theming!

Rename: Change Your iPhone Applications Names

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated October 16, 2017

Don't like the name of your apps? There's an app for that too...

Rename II is an application available in Cydia that allows you to rename your stock and jailbreak apps.

I first heard of Rename on AIS and I thought I should look into it a little more:

To change the name of an application, just select it from the list. You will then get a pop-up where you can enter what you would like the new title of the app to be. Once you are finished renaming the app you can select Ok and then hit the Home Button, your device will respring and the apps will be renamed on your SpringBoard.

You can even rename your apps using Emoji icons. Pretty cool, huh?

To install Rename II, you will have to add the SOSiPhone source to Cydia: http://cy.sosiphone.com/

Tell us what you think about this app!

Watch Live TV On Your iPhone or iPad With WinTV Extend

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 23, 2016

Do you want to watch live TV on your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad? It's now possible thanks to Hauppauge and their WinTV-HVR TV tuner boards.

According to the company's press release:

Live TV for these Apple devices is provided by Hauppauge's "WinTV Extend", which will be a feature in Hauppauge's new WinTV v7.2 application. WinTV Extend transmits live TV to Internet and WiFi connected devices such as the Apple iPad, iPhone and others. The WinTV v7.2 application provides live TV and TV recording to PCs equipped with a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR TV tuner.

Soon available for $9.95, the new WinTV Extend feature will take the live TV signal and transmit it over the Internet where it can be received by any web browser via Safari. More details will be available on Hauppauge's website soon.

I'm not enough of a TV fanatic to make use of this but you might... What do you think?

Make Your iPhone Icons Smaller With Shrink

Sébastien Page ∙ May 11, 2010

Shrink is a new application available in Cydia that lets you size down your iPhone icons in order to fit more on the screen. Well, at least that's what it says in the description as I was not able to fit more than 4 icons per row, but I might be missing something.

After installing Shrink from Cydia, simply go to your Settings.app. From there, you can reduce the size of your iPhone icons to up to 25% of the actual size (see screenshot).

The good thing is that Shrink is fully compatible with WinterBoard and InfiniDock. The downside is that it also shrinks your badges, making it almost impossible to see how many unread emails you have, for example.

All in all, I think Shrink does a pretty good job at reducing the size your icons, if that's what you're looking for. If not, then save yourself $0.99, which is the price to download Shrink in Cydia.

Have you tried Shrink? What do you think about it?

How to Recover Pictures Deleted by Spirit

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated March 18, 2016

Although Spirit is probably the easiest and fastest jailbreak ever, it does come with its share of problems. After jailbreaking their iDevice with Spirit, many people reported the loss of their pictures. This issue was fixed by Comex when he released an update to Spirit, but what happens to those of you who lost their pictures before the update?

I spotted an article that explains how to recover those missing pictures after jailbreaking your iPhone or iPad with Spirit. The process is pretty simple and it shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes.

For this to work, you will have had to backup your iPhone or iPad before jailbreaking. If you did not backup your device before jailbreaking with Spirit, then this will not work for you.

How to recover deleted photos from your iPhone or iPad after jailbreaking with Spirit

Step 1: If you haven't already, install OpenSSH from Cydia.

Step2: Download iPhone Backup Extractor (for Windows 32 bit or 64 bit - for Mac OS X).

Step 3: Launch iPhone Backup Extractor. It will automatically find backups available on your machine. Select the right one.

Step 4: Navigate to Media/Media/DCIM and select this folder. Click next to save it on your computer.

Step 5: Using CyberDuck for Mac of WinSCP for Windows, SSH into your device.

To find your IP address, on your device, go to Settings > Wifi > Tap on the blue arrow of the network you're on. Username is root. Password is alpine

Step 6: Navigate to User/Media and replace the existing DCIM folder by the one you downloaded to your computer in step 4.

Step 7: Reboot your device.

Done! All your lost pictures after using Spirit should be recovered.

How to Mount An External Hard Drive on the iPad

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 23, 2016

Yes, you read it right, you can mount an external hard drive on your iPad. This hack isn't the easiest one to perform but it's not very complicated either. If you know your way around Terminal, SSH and the likes, you should be fine.

Maxwell Shay wrote a very good tutorial on how to mount an external hard drive to a jailbroken iPad. I haven't tried it myself but I wanted to share the info with you as I think it's a pretty nice accomplishment. You can read the full tutorial here.

If you try to add an external hard drive to your lovely iPad, let us know how it went by leaving a comment.

Official iPhone Unlock the Easy (But Expensive) Way

Sébastien Page ∙ May 6, 2010

You may have heard that in certain countries, carriers offer their customers the possibility to buy unlocked iPhones. These iPhones don't differ from yours. They have exactly the same hardware and exactly the same software.

How does this official unlock work?

The difference between a locked iPhone and an officially unlocked one is due to the IMEI number, a number unique to every phone (it's like a fingerprint if you want). When officially unlocked, your IMEI is added to an Apple database which authorizes the device for unlocking.

Fine, but how to add your IMEI to the database? Well, turns out there are some people out there who seem to have the right connections at the right companies. After doing some research, I found one of these companies. According to their website, they know people at T-Mobile Germany (which offers officially unlocked iPhones). You can just pay them a hefty $190 and they will submit your IMEI to T-Mobile, who will add you to the official iPhone unlock database.

Apparently, it takes somewhere from 4 to 25 days to get this done. Once the addition to the database is processed, you can simply connect your iPhone to iTunes, follow the prompts to install a new carrier settings update, and you should be good to go.

I contacted this company about a month ago to get more information but they never replied to me, which is why I don't bother mentioning their name in this article.

Two days ago I talked to one of my friends who owns a mobile store in France. He's in the process of being approved by Apple to resell the iPhone so I asked him if he would be able to provide this official unlocking service to his future Apple customers. He told me he wouldn't take the risk but he said that he knows a few store around town that can do it for you for about $100.

It sure is expensive but the main benefit is that this iPhone unlock is permanent. Unlike some of the software unlocks such as UltraSn0w or BlackSn0w, you’ll be able to update your iPhone firmware without losing your unlock.

Would you be willing to pay nearly between $100 and $200 for an official unlock?

How to Set Up A Bookmarks Bar on Safari for iPad

Sébastien Page ∙ May 5, 2010

A bookmarks bar allows you to quickly access your favorite sites. Since the iPad has a pretty big screen, it's now possible to show a bookmark bar in Safari.

By default, the bookmark bar in Safari for iPad is hidden but you can easily activate it by going to Settings > Safari > Always show bookmarks bar.

To add bookmarks in the bar, you will have to save new bookmarks in the "bookmarks bar" folder.

That's a simple tip that can come in very handy if like me you like to optimize the amount of clicks (or taps).

iPhone Tethering: How to Tether iPhone 3.1.3

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated November 12, 2019

With Internet tethering on your iPhone, you don’t need wifi to surf the web from your computer. Tethering your iPhone allows you to share the 3G or Edge connection on your iPhone with your laptop and connect to the Internet anywhere.

A while ago, I wrote about tethering iPhone 3.1.2. Today, I'd like to show you how to tether iPhone 3.1.3.

UPDATE: This post is outdated. Please check out this page for the latest information about iPhone tethering.

Tethering iPhone 3.1.3

You have 2 options to set up internet tethering on your iPhone 3.1.3.

Option 1: If your iPhone is jailbroken

If your iPhone is jailbroken, you can simply install the MyWi app from Cydia ($10). Not only MyWi allows you to tether your iPhone, but it can also turn your iPhone into a wifi hotspot. If your iPhone is not jailbroken and you want to jailbreak it, read our Spirit jailbreak tutorial.

Option 2: If your iPhone is not jailbroken

UPDATE: I have tried this option on an iPhone 3G and it works fine. Many of you reported in the comments that it does not work. Proceed at your own risk...

If for some obscure reasons you do not want to jailbreak your iPhone but still want to tether it, there is another solution:

From your iPhone, navigate to Help.BenM.at Tap on "Tethering" Choose your country Choose your carrier Tap "Download" Tap "Install" Reboot your iPhone

After rebooting your iPhone, you should see a new option under Settings > General > Network > Internet Tethering. By turning Internet Tethering on, you will be able to share your iPhone internet connection with your laptop.

Note that for this to work, your SIM card should NOT be locked with a PIN. If so, simply deactivate the PIN lock in the settings.

That's this simple. You should now be able to tether your iPhone 3.1.3.

Fix For “Spirit Requires iTunes 9 to Function”

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated February 22, 2017

The Spirit jailbreak tool is probably the easiest jailbreak ever, however, like every piece of software, it is not perfect. Even though Spirit was updated yesterday, a few users still face issues.

One of the most common one is the error saying that "Spirit Requires iTunes 9 to function. Please install a correct version of iTunes and run Spirit again."

In this case, Spirit believes you are not running the correct version of iTunes, even though you are.

There is a simple fix for this:

Step 1: Download Spirit Fixer by Kirma (mirror link)

Step 2: Extract the downloaded file then run Spirit.Fixer.By.Kirma.v1.01.exe

Step 3: Run Spirit.exe

It should work.

[via Tech Petals]