If you ever want to call or text a contact on your iPhone, then you’d need to unlock your handset and visit the Contacts or Phone app to do so. But wouldn’t it be nice if you could skip that step entirely and get right to it?
The Spotify Music app is one of the best alternatives to Apple Music in terms of online music streaming for the iPhone or iPad, and while the application itself already sports a somewhat ‘dark’ aesthetic, there are certainly some areas where it could do with improvement for those who like using dark mode or who use an OLED display-equipped handset.
Blackout is a newly released and free jailbreak tweak by iOS developer atebitsy that brings improved dark mode and OLED display support to the Spotify Music app, and it does so by providing users with an always-blacked out Now Playing interface background, as depicted by the before and after screenshot examples above.
While it has always been possible to create music playlists in the Spotify Music app for iPhone and iPad, one thing that seemed to be missing was a way to customize those playlists in depth. Fortunately, those with a jailbreak are no longer bound to such asinine limitations.
Annotation is a newly released and free jailbreak tweak by iOS developer atebitsy that brings music playlist customization options to the Spotify Music app. Right out of the box, it will permit users to add detailed descriptions to their music playlists and even change the playlist’s cover artwork to their liking.
If you have a lot more apps installed on your iPhone than the average Joe, then chances are that you might forget where an app resides on your Home Screen from time to time. iOS & iPadOS 14 aim to improve Home Screen organization with the all-new App Library and the novel ability to hide apps from the Home Screen, but the circumstances are vastly different for those jailbroken in iOS or iPadOS 13 or earlier.
There’s a lot going on in the jailbreak community as of right now. Not only is the checkra1n team actively attempting to jailbreak iOS & iPadOS 14 on many more devices, but hacker and security researcher @08Tc3wBB may also soon share details about an exploit viable for jailbreaking iOS & iPadOS 13.7 (the last versions of Apple’s previous-generation mobile operating systems).
If you find yourself more interested in the latter tidbit, which is likely the case if you stayed on the lowest possible firmware after iOS & iPadOS 14 got released, then you might be ecstatic to learn that @08Tc3wBB will present his latest research with security group ZecOps at the Black Hat Europe 2020 event.
Just yesterday, AltStore lead developer Riley Testut released AltDaemon, a novel package for jailbroken handsets that enables side-loaded apps to be installed, refreshed, and updated on the fly without requiring the end user to connect to a Mac or Windows PC. AltDaemon is, in essence, a future-proof alternative to the popular ReProvision.
While yesterday’s AltDaemon release received praise by jailbreakers from all walks of life, there was just one caveat – it necessitated AltStore version 1.4, which at the time, wasn’t yet available to the general public. Fortunately, that changed this Wednesday evening…
Anyone who uses a side-loadable jailbreak like Odyssey or unc0ver should be keenly familiar with AltStore, as it quickly overtook Cydia Impactor as the most popular way to install these jailbreak apps on compatible devices after the latter stopped working for a substantial number of users. Like Cydia Impactor, however, AltStore had one major caveat: it required a Mac or Windows PC.
AltStore lead developer Riley Testut sought to change this about the platform’s user experience, and so a beta package for jailbroken devices dubbed AltDaemon was conceived back in June. AltDaemon’s purpose is to make AltStore a computer-independent experience, effectively permitting users to install, refresh, and update side-loaded apps without a computer. As of Tuesday, however, AltDaemon nowis out of beta and available to the general public.
As you interact with the volume buttons on your iPhone or iPad, a subtle yet functional volume HUD appears on the screen for a brief moment to advise you what your current volume level is. Users can also make fine adjustments to their handset’s volume level by performing tap and drag gestures on the volume HUD interface itself.
But let’s say you wanted a different volume HUD shape or X/Y positioning on the screen — this is something Apple doesn’t offer as a native feature on the iPhone or iPad out of the box. Fortunately, a newly released and free jailbreak tweak dubbed Volume Controller by iOS developer Tomasz Poliszuk can help with that.
The only iOS & iPadOS 14 devices that can be publicly jailbroken at the time of this writing are those sporting A9 and A9X processors, and while that could change in the very near future as the checkra1n team works on adding A10 and A10X support, the bigger question involves the likes of much newer devices that aren’t even susceptible to the checkm8 bootrom exploit.
Fortunately, renowned hacker and checkra1n team member Luca Todesco shared a particularly interesting announcement via Twitter Monday afternoon in the form of what appears to be a working exploit and PAC bypass for iOS & iPadOS 14 devices:
There’s a certain stigma surrounding jailbreaking and iOS & iPadOS 14 right about now, and all of it stems from the fact that Apple made its latest and greatest mobile operating systems a lot tougher to crack. But tougher doesn’t mean impossible, and that’s a fact, Jack.
With that in mind, it seemed appropriate to follow up with our optimistic attitude following Brandon Azad’s eye-tearing departure from Project Zero with a bit of good news: software security research group ABC Research appears willing to release an iOS & iPadOS 14-compatible exploit to the general public, assuming certain criteria are met…
With a new mobile operating system upon us and a recently teased iOS 14-centric security vulnerability, the wait has started to see if and when a new jailbreak tool will be made and released to liberate Apple’s device users from the company’s so-called ‘walled garden.’ That aside, those who are already jailbroken are surely wondering about the best ways to take advantage of their pwned handset, and that’s what this piece will be all about.
In this roundup, we’ll showcase all the latest jailbreak tweaks to be released from Monday, September 28th to Sunday, October 4th. As always, we’ll kick things off by showcasing our favorite tweaks first and then move on to an outline of all the rest afterward.
One of the most substantial changes Apple implemented in the new iOS and iPadOS 14 software updates a couple of weeks ago involves widget functionality. Once confined to the Today page, widgets can now be integrated directly into the Home Screen user experience; furthermore, those same widgets have become more advanced and interactive than they were in previous versions of iOS and iPadOS, but they’re still far from perfect.
If you’re fortunate enough to have a jailbroken iOS or iPadOS 14 device at your disposal (currently only possible with the checkra1n jailbreak and an A9 or A9X handset at the time of this writing), then you may now take advantage of a newly released and free jailbreak tweak dubbed Centauri by iOS developer MTAC to unlock new features specifically designed for iOS and iPadOS 14’s native Batteries widget.