Cydia

Cydia news and information: read the latest development about Cydia, including jailbreak tweaks.

Extended Preferences 1.0

Sébastien Page ∙ October 15, 2008

Extended Preferences is a new app available in Cydia that allows you to take the customization of your iPhone a step further. Something quite unusual about Extended Preferences is that after downloading it, you have to "activate" it in WinterBoard.

Once it's activated, you can go set your preferences in Settings > SpringBoard (note that this "SpringBoard" tab has been added by Extended Preferences.

Extended Preferences will allow you to:

hide internal apps such as Safari, YouTube, etc... Set fake signal bars, time, or carrier Display a numeric battery or wifi

I downloaded Extended Preferences 1.0 and tried to set a numeric battery. It wouldn't work. Have you guys been luckier than me?

Where is Cydia from?

Sébastien Page ∙ October 8, 2008

For those of you that are not familiar with jailbreaking, Cydia is an open-source distribution platform created by Jay "Saurik" Freeman that is now automatically installed on your iPhone with the DevTeam jailbreaks such as QuickPwn and PwnageTool. Cydia is pretty much the equivalent of the App Store and lets you download, install and update applications developed by independent developers.

But where does this name come from? Cydia? Erica Sadun, who happens to be my all-time favorite iPhone blogger (she used to be with TUAW until they start screwing their writers over and is now working over at Ars Technica) wrote a very interesting post today about the origins of Cydia.

Cydia pomonella is the scientific name for the coddling moth, which as Freeman writes "is what we often think of the as the stereotypical apple worm." He adds, "I felt the name was fitting." It's certainly easier to say than Rhagoletis, after Rhagoletis pomonella, the apple maggot.

Freeman regularly gets e-mails from people asking how to say the name. He jokes that they write "'Please help me win this bet I have with my friend: is Cydia pronounced see-dee-uh or sigh-dee-uh.' It's always two incorrect choices." For the record, the correct pronunciation is sih-DEE-uh. Or it is at least for the moment. "I don't actually speak or study Latin, but I am a linguistics student." He adds that he's open to corrections from Latin experts.

Read the full post here.

Nightmare Before Christmas theme

Sébastien Page ∙ October 8, 2008

Nothing less than 2766 files contained in this 13.9MB download. No wonder why it took over 5 minutes to download this Nightmare Before Christmas theme from Cydia. But what a great theme it is! I mean this iPhone theme has definitely been thought through and designed with the greatest care.

I downloaded and activated the theme in WinterBoard. My iPhone automatically resprung and when I tapped on the screen to "unlock" the iPhone, I was greeted with a "Well, well, well, look who's here". I haven't seen the movie but I'm pretty sure it's a line from it. Pretty cool, yet pretty scary when you don't expect it!

A few seconds after installing this theme, I received an email and instead of having the default new email sound, this theme added a music from the movie. At this point, I was still impressed by the quality of the theme and I decided to explore more of the sounds. I sent and received text messages, emails, new voicemails, and for every of these actions, a special music would play. That's nice but it gets very annoying in the long run. I mean, I really don't want to hear a 5 second music every time I send or receive a text message...

A cool feature of this theme is that when you open an application, it displays an image while the application is opening. Since firmware 2.1 is pretty laggy, it's nice to have an image instead of a blank page when trying to launch an application...

A couple hours after installing this theme, I had a quick look at my battery life.... Wow it was half way gone. These cool sounds are nice but they will sure kill you battery.

All in all, it's a great theme and like I said earlier, every little detail of it was perfectly done. Unfortunately, features like the musics playing every time you do something on the phone not only annoy me, but they also drain my battery. These are 2 deal breakers.

Backgrounder runs multiple apps at once

Cody Lee ∙ Updated November 22, 2022

Backgrounder from Lance Fetters is a new Cydia app out that promises to turn your ordinary iPhone into a multitasking machine. And after a quick download I'd have to say it delivered it in style.

Upon install you'll get a hard respring. But don't get caught looking for an icon, because there is none. You activate the app by opening up any legally downloaded Apple App Store app, (I haven't gotten it to work with cydia apps), and holding down the home button until a prompt pops up and lets you know backgrounder is enabled.

Now, for those of you who use a music app like Pandora, and want to listen to your Pandora music while you browse your photos or do something else on your iPhone, be excited. I personally use it when I am playing a video game. I hit pause, run backgrounder and quit the game, send a text, and re open the game and voila! No loading time, and I didn't lose my progress in my game.

I haven't tested the battery usage, but I'm assuming it makes a noticeable difference if you leave it on. And it will stay on until you restart/respring or disable it manually the same way you enabled it.

Bottom line is, this application will help make light work of those once tedious app switching jobs. I am cody lee, and I approve this message

Podcaster available on Cydia

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated March 9, 2016

The fact that Apple rejected the Podcaster app from the App Store won't stop the company from making this great app available to the general public; well, at least to the jailbroken general public. Indeed, Podcaster is now available in Cydia. Oh, and it comes with a 14 days trial. After that, it will cost you $4.99. Take that, Apple!

iPhoneModem: the 10 second iPhone tethering

Sébastien Page ∙ September 14, 2008

It looks like someone finally did it. NetShare had tried but was banned from the App Store. NetShare was not very user friendly but they were the first iPhone tethering application out there.

Yesterday, iPhoneModem, an application for the iPhone that aims at making it really easy to use the iPhone’s Internet connection on your computer, was released in Cydia.

From iPhoneModem.com:

What is iPhoneModem

iPhoneModem is an application for the iPhone that aims at making it really easy to use the iPhone's Internet connection on your computer. iPhoneModem is available for installation jailbreaked devices using Cydia or Installer package managers.

How does it work

On the Mac, iPhoneModem creates a WiFi network to be able to connect to your iPhone and automatically configures the network settings to use a Socks Proxy. On the iPhone it acts as a "Socks Proxy" effectively sharing the Internet Connection.

Why isn't it on the AppStore

Because Apple has not yet (since July '08) responded to our "iPhone Developer Program" application and because it has already shown reluctancy to approve sharing the iPhones Internet connection. The reasons for not allowing sharing or "tethering" on the iPhone are probably related to current AT&T contractual limitations. These limitations are not global, meaning that there are other companies/providers which allow it, and we do not believe that Apple and AT&T will maintain this for much longer simply because it's clearly bad business.

How to Install

1. Jailbreak the iPhone (if you haven't already):

2. On the iPhone use "Cydia" or "Installer" to install iPhoneModem - it's filed on the Networking category. After installing a new App named "Modem" should be available on the iPhone.

If you cannot find it you can add our repository to Cydia. The URL is http://iphonemodem.com/cydia

How to Use it

If you have MacOS 10.5 (Leopard), first download and open iPhoneModem on the Mac, click "Connect" and then open "Modem" on the iPhone. Make sure that on the iPhone you are connected to a WiFi network named "iPhoneModem", created by the Mac application. That's it, you can start surfing the web.

If you are using Microsoft Windows, Linux or a previous version of MacOS, you'll have to manually create an WiFi network between the computer and the iPhone and configure Socks Proxy with the WiFi IP of the iPhone and port 1080.

So far, iPhoneModem only worls for Mac but they say they are working on a Windows version.

Record videos on your iPhone with Cycorder 0.9-4

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 23, 2016

Hooray! Cycorder just updated to version 0.9-4 and now allows you to record videos with sound on your iPhone. I have to say I am really impressed by the quality of the picture and the sound recording.

Cycorder allows you to record videos on your iPhone at the maximum speed of the iPhone camera (6-15 frames per second), with no compression delay between pressing sop and getting to view the resulting video.

Cycorder does MJPEG compression and video files are recorded at 384×288, a 4×3 TV aspect ratio.

How do you get your recorded video from your iPhone to your computer? When you record a video, it is placed as a .mov movie in /var/mobile/Media/Videos. Apparently, a future version might integrate into DCIM.

Here is what this 0.9-4 upgrade brings to Cycorder:

audio recording TV out supported playback (does that mean TV output?) no autolock when recording a few minor fixes

I recorded my own video and made it available to you. You can view this video made with Cycorder here.

The application is only available in Cydia and believe it or not, it is free. It shows ads while you record but these ads are not intrusive at all. Ads don’t show anywhere on your recording when you’re watching.

How to install iphone games / applications without Cydia or SSH in ISPW

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 23, 2016

Thought I’d share something i just tried and worked.

Full credits go to Dabbler who originally posted this on MMI and Hackint0sh.

You want to install iPhone games and applications, but if like me, want to keep your phone as stock as possible (no Cydia, no SSH or any of that) then this is how you do it.

1-Create a custom firmware using the latest pwnage 2-Do not select Cydia, packages or anything else (unless you want to unlock / neuter etc) 3-When pwnage tool asks you for your admin password, around 3/4 of the way through the process – DO NOT ENTER IT 4-Look for the finder window that has opened on your desktop 5-Navigate to navigate /System/Library/PrivateFrameWorks/MobileInstallation.framework 6-Delete the file MobileInstallation 7-Cope the modified MobileInstallation to this folder (I will not say where to get it, but the usual places for modified iPhone stuff would have it) 8-Get the info on the file and set all permissions to read/write 9-Close the window 10-Enter your password that was asked for earlier in pwnage tool. 11-Continue as normal and flash your apparent vanilla ispw to your iPhone. 12- Sync one legit (free or purchased) iPhone app or game to your iPhone.

This is the good bit, you now have a iPhone with no Cydia, no SSH nothing except a modified MobileInstallation framework!

What does this mean? Well you can obtain IPA’s of iPhone applications and games, double click them – they will import to the itunes applications section and you can sync them to your phone just like store bought applications! It also means you can also delete them directly from the iPhone using the hold-app-press-x method – No more SSH or Cydia.

List of apps available on Cydia

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated August 5, 2009

Here is a list of applications that are currently available on Cydia. Please feel free to add any other app in the comments.

Administration

IOKit Tools – ioalloccount, ioclasscount, ioreg iPatcher – removes the brick mode from iPhone Kernal Extension Tools – tools that work with kernal extensions Isof – shows what files programs have open Sudo – temporarily assume root priviledges top – at-a-glance process watching tool

Archiving

cpio – predecessor to tar that is used by RPM DMG2IMG – converts compressed dmgs to HFS+ fastjar – faster native alternative to Java’s Jar libarchive – backend library for working with tar files rzip – the best compression algorithm unrar – de-compress files in rar format 7-zip (POSIX) – claims to be a good compressor

Data Storage

cvs – the original popular revision control Git – fast content-addressable filesystem Subversion – modern version control system

Development

APR – platform abstraction library from Apache APR-util – data structures and utilites for Apache APR Assuan – GnuPG’s inter-process communication Bison – GNU parser generator derived from Yacc Bootstrap Commands – Mach interface and stub generator Class Dump – reverse engineer Objective-C headers Csu – library loading and support stubs Darwin CC Tools – linker and assembler for the iPhone developer-cmds – ctags, error, hexdump, rpcgen, unifdef Flex – GNU lexer derived from Lex glib – basic object management used by Gnome GNU C Compiler – a native c compiler _on_ the phone GNU Multiple Precision – (Big) Arithmetic Library GNU Portable Threads – portable threading library used by X Google Data API’s – GData client library (Objective-C)

indent – automatically prettifies a C program iPhone 2.0 Toolchain – Full *compatibilty toolchain with one click! Use this to compile your 1.1.x apps for 2.0 with some limitations. BigBoss’ headers for 1.1.1 from working Cygwin toolchain. Also depends on all other necessary packages. Copies to /var/include and symlinks /usr/local/include to /var/include if possible. Also links gcc to arm-apple-darwin-gcc.

libffi – dynamic generation of function calls libgpod – ipod data access library libsigc++ – callback framework for C++ LibVNCServer – backend library for VNC servers Link Indenty Editor – pseudo-codesign Mach-O files Make – dependency-based build environments Patch – merge a difference onto a file XML Parser Toolkit – Stream-oriented XML parser written in C

Games

Macman – an outstanding Pacman knock-off with a nice twist!

NES – NES Emulator for iPhone quake4iphone – Includes shareware Quake files. Retail files highly recommended. Visit zodttd.com for more info.

ScummVM – is a program which allows you to run certain classic graphical point-and-click adventure games, provided you already have their data files.

Java

Classpath – open source implementation of Jave iPhone/Jave – example applications (with source) in Java JamVM – Small, intricate, fast Java interpreter Java SQLite – JNI bindings and JDBC driver for SQLite Jikes – native faster alternative to Java’s javac JocStrap – Java/Objective-C connection library Rhino – Java implementation of Java Script UICaboodle – iPhone-specific JocStrap extensions

Localization

BrFix – Brazilian Regional Fixes RuFix – Russian Regional Fixes Slovak Language Replacement

Multimedia

FAAC – open source library for MPEG-4 AAC FAAD – open sournce library for MPEG-4 AAC Festival-Lite – embedded text-to-speech library LAME – open source (lgpl) mp3 encoder Ogg – open multimedia container format png – library for manipulating PNG files SwapTunes – Allows you to Sync with multiple iTunes libraries. TIFF – Tagged Image File Format library Vorbis – Open audio compression format x264 – open source implementation of x264

Thanks to Cliffeman for compiling this list over at Everything iCafe.