SmartBanners lets you customize your iOS banner notifications

Your notification banners are an intimate part of your iOS experience that you use to interact with apps and people on a daily basis. With that being said, wouldn't it be nice if you could customize some of their features a little bit?

A new free jailbreak tweak called SmartBanners is now available in Cydia's BigBoss repository free of cost, and will give users a myriad of configuration options to customize the look and behavior of their notification banners. In this piece, we'll take you through a bit of how the tweak works.

FastShare: use Activator to quickly share content to Facebook, Twitter, and Messages from anywhere

FastShare is a new jailbreak tweak available in Cydia's BigBoss repository for $1.49 that lets you harness the power of Activator to allow you to more easily share information with your friends, family, and followers.

The tweak comes with a unique interface for sharing information across your favorite social mediums, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Messages, and it includes options that you can configure to your liking so the tweak looks and behaves how you want it to.

‘Other’ storage on your Mac explained

We recently detailed 'Other' iOS storage, an iTunes-reported section that includes various caches and temporary system files on you iPhone, iPod touch and iPad along with device settings, high-quality Siri and Voice Over voices and other system data.

Not many people know that macOS reports 'Other' storage on Macs, too. Unlike its iOS counterpart, the 'Other' Mac storage basically counts non-media files that don't fit any other category.

In addition, files not recognized by Spotlight are classed as 'Other' storage, among other items. Here's precisely what files are included in the 'Other' storage section, how to see its size, why your disk's used space appears as 'Other' storage when you startup up your Mac in Safe Mode and more.

Apple enables redownloads of audiobooks, iOS 9.3 to add audiobooks to Automatic Downloads

Thanks to the iTunes in the Cloud feature, Apple customers have long been able to re-download apps, movies, TV shows, music, music videos, books, ring tones and tones purchased on the iTunes Store, but not audiobooks. As per Apple's newly updated support document, customers in 22 countries total can now re-download any audiobook.

This feature is available in iBooks on an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch with iOS 8.4 or later, or in iTunes on a Mac or Windows PC. In addition, previously downloaded audiobooks, free or paid, are now listed in your Purchased history in iBooks and iTunes.

OneSafe password manager goes free as Apple’s App of the Week

Apple on Thursday updated its App of the Week promotion with the app OneSafe. This means that for the next 7 days, you'll be able to pickup Lunabee's popular password manager for free for both iPhone and iPad, a solid savings of $5.

For those who aren't familiar with it, oneSafe provides advanced security for your sensitive data with features like Touch ID, decoy safe, intrusion detection, and self-destruct mode. It stores logins, financial data, credit cards and more.

Explore the world of Wikipedia in revamped iOS app with 3D Touch, Explore feed and more

Wikipedia, the world's encyclopedia and knowledge base, has never had an attractive mobile app. That changes today with a major refresh to its app in the App Store permitting users to explore Wikipedia content tailored to their interests via an all-new Explore feed.

Navigations has been greatly simplified with new touch-friendly ways to discover content, 3D Touch support, Spotlight Search integration and more.

The app was obviously designed with the theme of exploration in mind.

“We all know Wikipedia as a quick fact-checking resource, but the new app is designed to make exploring knowledge on Wikipedia a journey,” developers told me via email.

EA announces Plants vs. Zombies Heroes, a collectible card game set in the PvZ universe

Super publisher Electronic Arts today announced Plants vs. Zombies Heroes, a new installment in its popular Plants vs. Zombies series that “takes you beyond the backyard.” A collectible card game, Heroes lets you choose from hundreds of characters across the Plants vs. Zombies universe, including new roster favorites from Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare 2 like Super Brainz, Z-Mech, Citron and Rose.

Featuring comic-style narrative that tells the story gradually as the game progresses, Heroes challenges you to assemble an all-star Plants vs. Zombies team to outwit opponents in battle. The game soft-launched in New Zealand ahead of its upcoming worldwide release.

Apple seeds tvOS 9.2 beta 6 to developers

Thursday, Apple seeded a sixth beta of the upcoming tvOS 9.2 software update for the fourth-generation Apple TV to the members of the Apple Developer Program.

The new tvOS 9.2 beta 6 has a build number of “13Y5232a” and is available as an over-the-air update on new Apple TVs with a configuration profile installed.

The restore image to side-load tvOS betas on Apple TVs via iTunes or Apple Configurator using a USB-C to USB-A cable is on Apple's portal for developers.

Apple sends out invites for March 21 event: “Let us loop you in”

Following weeks of speculation, Apple on Thursday sent out invites for a media event later this month that should serve as a launchpad for new iPhone and iPad models, Apple Watch bands and possibly more.

The press event will be held at Apple's Cupertino campus on Monday, March 21, 2016, at 10:00am PT, and will be live-streamed using HTTP Live Streaming.

As you may have guessed, iDownloadBlog will continue covering everything there's to know about about Apple's product refreshes.

Eddy Cue: what if FBI forces Apple to spy on users via iPhone’s camera or microphone?

Not a day goes by without one of Apple's executives reaffirming the company's position on encryption. In a new Spanish-language interview with Univision, Eddy Cue, Apple's Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services, made the case against the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) gaining additional surveillance powers.

Were the government to force Apple to create a version of iOS with decreased security, nothing would prevent it from seeking other concessions, Cue said.

“For example, one day the FBI may want us to open your phone's camera, microphone,” he cautioned. “Those are things we can't do now. But if they can force us to do that, I think that's very bad.”

Social Square puts your favorite social networks in one app

As a rule thumb, the more popular a social network is the uglier, slower and more terrible its mobile app gets.

Facebook's app, for instance, has long been criticized for its battery hogginess, especially after it's been discovered that it's suspiciously circumventing Background App Refresh to continue running in the background when it should not.

That's where Social Square comes into play.

Formerly known as MySocial, this iPhone app by Chase Giles lets you browse Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ and Tumblr without having to worry about your iPhone's battery life.