I love using my iPhone to listen to music, but I can’t lie – I really can’t stand how iOS reduces the music playback volume when a notification tone comes through. This problem really becomes evident when your favorite part of the song is about to come up and someone just happens to text message you at that exact moment.
All I can say to that is… Ugh!
Battery consumption is a very real concern among jailbreakers, especially given the fact that certain jailbreak tweak configurations can add to the burden of keeping your phone alive throughout the day.
While most people simply glance at the Status Bar or visit the Battery preference pane in the Settings app to learn more about their battery usage, those who want a brief battery usage report every morning when they wake up might take an interest in a newly released and free jailbreak tweak dubbed DrainCheck by iOS developer Ginsu.
Do Not Disturb mode is an indispensable feature on iPhones and iPads that I’ve grown particularly fond of over the years. Although it isn’t new, I still use it just as much today as I did when it first came out.
There’s just one problem — it’s can be all too easy to forget that you turned Do Not Disturb mode on in the first place, which sometimes results in missed notifications that you otherwise didn’t intend to silence.
Whenever you switch the iPhone’s ringer/silent switch between the ringer and silent positions, iOS automatically shows a small pop-up at the top of the display to let you know the status of the switch.
We really like this subtle feature, and that’s one of the reasons why we’ve often wondered why Apple doesn’t do the same for Do Not Disturb mode. After all, if you’re unaware when Do Not Disturb gets turned on, you could miss important notifications. With that in mind, you’d think Apple would want users to be more aware of when it gets switched on or off – automatically or not.
All of Apple’s iPhone models come equipped with a side-mounted ringer/silent switch that makes silencing your device’s incoming notification sounds so effortless that it can be done right from your pocket. But as we witnessed in a popular /r/jailbreak request post from this past week, a sizable portion of iPhone users would come to appreciate the ability to repurpose the ringer/silent switch as a physical Do Not Disturb toggle switch.
The aforementioned idea seemed like a good idea even to me when I read about it earlier in the week, but now that a new and free jailbreak tweak called DnDSwitch by iOS developer smokin1337 officially exists, I can genuinely say that I welcome the concept even more than I did just a few days ago when I read about it on Reddit.
Apple’s iPhone and iPad come standard with a notification-hampering feature known as Do Not Disturb, which can keep your handset silent when you don’t feel like being bothered by rings, dings, and other noises. More recently, Do Not Disturb began showing an unsightly banner on the Lock Screen when enabled, and not all users have taken kindly to it.
Lune is a free jailbreak tweak by iOS developer Litten that was just recently rewritten from scratch to provide a new way of discerning when Do Not Disturb is turned on via the Lock Screen. It does so by displaying a configurable Moon icon wherever the user may choose to put it, just as depicted in the screenshot example above.
The notification system that comes pre-installed on the iOS platform is easy to use and certainly gets the job done. A short alert tone here or a subtle vibration there, and you’ll almost never miss a notification as it gets pushed to your handset. But some would argue that iOS’ notification system is perhaps a little bit too simple…
With iOS’ Do Not Disturb feature, you can effortlessly silence all incoming notifications that bombard your iPhone with the flip of a switch. Unfortunately, Do Not Disturb is a bit of an all-or-nothing solution. While you can individually silence contacts in the Messages app as an alternative, this doesn’t quite offer enough control if you use lots of third-party apps to keep in touch with friends and family.
iBlockX is a newly released jailbreak tweak by iOS developers Greg0109 and MeBlackHat that strives to solve the aforementioned dilemma. It does so by handing users a smorgasbord of options for silencing calls and other notifications on a per-contact basis and for several different apps spanning user-configured time-frames whether those apps come preinstalled by Apple or not.
Apple's just-refreshed MacBook Air with the new Apple M1 laptop chip that was announced yesterday features an updated media key layout in the function row, with the new shortcuts for Dictation, Spotlight and Do Not Disturb functions replacing the previous keys for adjusting brightness and invoking the Launchpad feature. Also, there's now a dedicated Emoji key.
I’ll be the first to admit that I think push notifications are both a gift and a curse. It can be convenient to have real-time notifications when someone’s trying to get in touch with you, but it can also be annoying having a device that integrates your personal entertainment with seemingly endless streams of notifications that hijack your focus away from what matters most to you.
If you can relate, then we think you’re going to love a newly released and free jailbreak tweak called NotiBlock by iOS developer ShemeshApps.
It’s a wonderful thing that Apple finally came to and brought native screen recording capabilities to the iOS platform. In fact, I still remember the not-too-distant past when you would’ve needed a jailbreak tweak or a disgraced App Store app to make this happen.
But as great as iOS’ native screen recording function is, there’s one significant caveat that bugs me, and a newly released and free jailbreak tweak dubbed DNDMyRecording by iOS developer gilshahar7 addresses it.
If you’re using any of the latest versions of iOS, then you’re probably familiar with the Do Not Disturb banner that rears its ugly head on the Lock screen whenever you have this feature turned on.
While it’s nice to be reminded that Do Not Disturb mode is toggled on, I find the banner to be somewhat intrusive in that it takes up space on the Lock screen and must be manually dismissed. Fortunately, a new and free jailbreak tweak called NoDNDBanner by iOS developer MrGcGamer does away with it automatically.