Cydia news and information: read the latest development about Cydia, including jailbreak tweaks.
There is a new mod in town. Its name is vWallpaper and it's an awesome jailbreak app that will bring video wallpaper to your iPhone homescreen. Redmond Pie has a video of it in action and I have to admit it's pretty impressive.
vWallpaper comes pre-loaded with a few video wallpapers but you can also download some new ones from within the application. Really neat!
We've talked about Multifl0w before, one the first jailbreak apps to give a multitasking UI to the iPhone. At the time, I wasn't really a fan because I thought that ProSwitcher was a much better application. Things have changed a lot since then. Apple developed their own multitasking feature, and ProSwitcher was left for dead by its developer who recently said he will not update it.
It's like Christmas for me right now. One of my favorite jailbreak apps, Action Menu, has been updated to bring support for iOS 4, the iPhone 4 and the iPad. I've always confessed my love for Action Menu, which saves me tons of time in my everyday usage of the iPhone.
For those of you who don't know about Action Menu, let me give you a quick glimpse at what it does. Action Menu takes a stab at enhancing the copy/paste function of your iPhone by adding a bunch of add-ons to it. The lite version is free but for $2.99, you can get the full-featured app, which I think is well worth the money.
Want to send SMS from your iPad? There is an app for that, assuming you have a jailbroken iPad 3G. SwirlyMessage is a new jailbreak application by the developer of SwirlyMMS that allows you to send and receive real SMS and MMS on your iPad 3G.
In order to use SwirlyMessage, you need a jailbroken iPad 3G, and make sure that your carrier data plan allows for sending sending SMS and/or MMS. I don't have an iPad 3G so I wasn't able to try this application but from what I understand, SwirlyMessage simply provides an interface to send SMS through your carrier. If that's the case, extra cost for each SMS sent/received might apply.
You can download SwirlyMessage from Cydia for $12. Please let us know what you think of this application should you decide to give it a try.
Are you tired of using the "Slide to Unlock" thingy on your iPhone to get access to its homescreen? Then VUnlock might the jailbreak app you've been waiting for. VUnlock allows you to use the volume button of your iPhone to unlock the screen.
Using the volume key to access your phone might be a faster way than turning on the screen and swiping your finger across. The downside is you might accidentally unlock your iPhone more often now it's just one push of a button away.
If like me you get annoyed by folders staying opened after you launch and close an application from within this folder, then FolderCloser should be the right mod for you. Available for free in Cydia, FolderCloser will automatically close the opened folder at app launch. There are no settings or icon for this app. Just install it and your folders should now close by themselves.
Five Icon Switcher is a new mod by Chpwn that, just like the name suggests, brings an additional icon to your iPhone multitasking switcher. Not groundbreaking but simple and very convenient. That's the kind of mods I like!
In what might be the biggest exposure Cydia has ever gotten, Justin Long showed off his jailbroken iPhone on Jimmy Kimmel Live Wednesday night. Long appeared before in a series of Apple commercials where he played "Mac" in the Mac vs. PC ads running from 2006 to 2009. The jailbroken app featured was TVOutTuner (available in the Cydia Store) which allows a user to display the content on their iPhone screen to their TV.
While no mention of Cydia (however at the end you can see the icon clearly) exists in the clip, the ability to display your phone's screen is not permitted by any of Apple's approved applications.
The once Apple spokesman showcased a series of text messages that were sent by an obvious teenager who had the wrong number. Justin played along with the youngster (apparently for months) by replying with assorted responses where he imitated the mangling of language. The clip goes on for 7 minutes but is a hilarious watch. Aside from good material, viewing the video will make a non-jailbreaker think twice about their stock device. Trust me.
Like many of your probably know, The U.S. Liberty of Congress declared you can legally jailbreak your iDevices. However the hacking and downloading of applications not approved by Apple could result in voiding your warranty. At least that's what Apple says.
Safari Download Manager, the extension that adds a powerful download manager to the iPhone's web browser, has been updated to work on iOS 4, bringing support for the iPhone 4 and the iPad.
Although a bit pricey, Safari Download Manager is a great application that really unleashes to power of the iPhone, allowing you to download and save on your device virtually any file out there.
You can download Safari Download Manager from Cydia for $5.
Remove Background is a new mod available in Cydia that adds a toggle to SBSettings allowing you to remove all apps from the task switcher, and kill apps processes at the same time. It's pretty handy because your app switcher can get messy really quickly if you recently opened several applications
I've been looking for a similar app for a while and although Remove Background works as advertised, I find it to be too "extreme" for me. I rarely (if ever) want to kill all apps at once. Instead, I'd like to be able to select in the settings what apps I never want to run in the background or appear in the task switcher. If you're a developer, feel free to use my idea...
What about you? Have you used Remove Background? What do you think about it?
NoCyFresh is a new jailbreak app available in the http://repo.modyouri.com/ repo that provides a way to enable and disable Cydia's refresh of packages at launch. You can still manually refresh by going to the Changes section and hitting "refresh".
I haven't personally tried it but I'd love to hear your thoughts if you have. It seems that NoCyFresh can be a real time saver. Comments?
UPDATE: iDB reader Burge tells us this is a dangerous package. After a bit of research, turns out he is correct. Don't install NoCyFresh (or do it at your own risks)
Face Time Mod is a new jailbreak app that changes the FPS (Frames Per Second) during your FaceTime calls to optimize the video quality depending on your Internet connection. This allows for better quality video if your wifi connection can handle it. In the same way, it will lower the quality of the video if you're running FaceTime on Edge using My3G for example.
By default, the original FPS is a minimum of 15 and a maximum of 15 as well. Face Time Mod brings the minimum down to 6 FPS and the max to 30 FPS.
There is one big downside to this app though: both iPhones must have Face Time Mod installed for it to work.
Face Time Mod is available for free in Cydia under the http://repo.modyouri.com repo.
What do you think of it?