The jailbreak community has been somewhat of a roller coaster ride for the last several weeks, slowing down and speeding up from time to time.
In this roundup, we talk about all the jailbreak tweaks that launched throughout the past week, starting with our favorites and then moving on the rest afterwards.
One of the benefits of having a jailbreak is being able to give your iPhone a new look and feel that's different from every other average Joe on the block. A new free jailbreak tweak dubbed CCSmooth10 by CydiaGeek takes aim at the Control Center interface with this concept in mind.
This tweak comes with a host of options that can make Control Center look totally different than it does out of the box. Its effects are purely cosmetic rather than functional, but to say you can get some awesome effects out of the tweak is an understatement.
I use the image-cropping tools from my iPhone's Photos app on a daily basis, and I've noticed that I accidentally invoke the Notification Center grabber quite a lot while cropping when I attempt to drag down from the top of the image.
BetterPhotoCrop by iOS developer Andreas Henriksson is a new free jailbreak tweak that moves the cropping interface down enough to prevent the Notification Center grabber from being invoked when you drag down from the top of an image to crop it.
Available on a wide variety of Android handsets is the bottom navigation bar, and with a jailbreak tweak called AlternateControls 2 by iOS developer Ian Burns, you can bring this functionality to your iPhone as well.
Once installed, the button to the far left will act as a back button, letting you move backwards between interfaces you’ve visited previously, while the center button acts as a virtual Home button and the button to the far right acts as an App Switcher shortcut.
If you have a pet peeve for incoming notifications interrupting your music when you’re trying to sit back and enjoy a song, then installing a new free jailbreak tweak called QuietWhilePlaying (iOS 10) by iOS developer ijapija00 should be next on your to-do list.
This tweak silences the alert sounds and vibrations associated with incoming notifications, no matter which app they're coming from, whenever you’re actively listening to media.
Every so often, a jailbreak tweak emerges that lets you do something out of the ordinary with your iPhone, and a new release called Ambiance by iOS developer Ziph0n is a testament to such tweaks.
Ambience links your jailbroken iPhone and Phillips HUE smart light bulbs together in new and exciting ways, immersing your entire room with color effects based on what you’re doing on your device at a given time.
At the beginning of May, iOS developer Limneos started tinkering with the iPhone’s NFC chip to allow it talk to third-party NFC tags and accessories that Apple has never allowed its system to talk to before.
At the time, it was just a work in progress and a proof of concept, but Limneos has officially released a new jailbreak tweak in Cydia dubbed NFCWriter that unlocks the full potential of your NFC chip for everyone. It's the first time that the chip has been hacked to this extent, and it opens a whole new realm of possibilities.
In case you haven’t seen it yet, iOS 11 comes with a redesigned Now Playing Lock screen interface. It’s sleeker and takes up less space so you can manage your music playback and see missed notifications in the same place more easily.
Now, a new jailbreak tweak called Lysithea X by iOS developer ijapija00 brings this iOS 11 Now Playing Lock screen interface to jailbroken iOS 10 devices.
If you want a more powerful App Switcher, then perhaps a good place to start is with a new jailbreak tweak called SwitcherControls by iOS developer DGh0st.
Immediately reminiscent of the multi-center feature from a prior jailbreak tweak release known as Auxo 3, SwitcherControls combines both the App Switcher and Control Center interfaces into one, yielding what you see above.
The Lock screen clock appears at the top center of the Lock screen on any stock device out of the box, but with a new free jailbreak tweak called TimeMover Lite by iOS developer NeinZedd9, you can re-position it anywhere you'd like.
If the concept sounds familiar, that’s because this is a free version of the TimeMover tweak that we showed you a couple of weeks ago, but it’s still plenty powerful.
There are times when you can take notifications, and then there are times when you just can't. While Do Not Disturb is a great tool for this, it’s not the perfect solution to avoiding unwanted notifications because it relies on you to manually enable or schedule it, and sometimes we forget.
That’s a weak link that a new jailbreak tweak called Auto SilentMe by iOS developer IArrays hopes to strengthen, as it brings new notification-suppressing features to your device that will prevent embarrassing notifications from coming in when you don't want them knocking at the door.
It bothers me from time to time when I watch videos on social media or YouTube and realize just how many people record their videos while their smartphone is in portrait orientation.
These services are formatted for computer screens, which naturally have displays longer than they are tall, so recording videos in this way usually degrades the viewing experience for the viewer. That’s why a free jailbreak tweak called VerticalVideoSyndrome 2 by iOS developer Andreas Henriksson is now available.