iOS

SpotAlarm tweak lets you play any Spotify track for an alarm

Spotify users: if you've ever wanted to use your favorite song on Spotify as an alarm for when you wake up in the morning, and you happen to have a jailbroken device, then you're in luck!

With SpotAlarm, a new jailbreak tweak available free of cost in Cydia's BigBoss repository, you can set any one song from Spotify to play when your alarm goes off in the morning – or whenever else you may want to have an alarm go off.

Why you should avoid free VPNs

VPNs are great tools for helping secure your internet access on an unsecured Wi-Fi network, such as those at McDonald's, but did you know that not all VPNs are created equally?

By using a free VPN that you haven't carefully read the terms and conditions of, you might be putting your privacy at more of a risk than it would have been just using the unsecured Wi-Fi network to browse the web in the first place.

This tweak lets you use 3D Touch to measure an object’s weight

3D Touch gives iPhone 6s users tons of new features throughout the iOS operating system out of the box, but that's not keeping the jailbreak community from coming up with incredible new uses for it.

Grams is an incredible new jailbreak tweak being made available in Cydia's BigBoss repository for $0.99 that allows those with an iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus to measure the weight of light objects by using the 3D Touch display right from Control Center, and in this piece, we'll take you through a few of the details of how it's able to accomplish this.

New in iOS 9.3 beta 2: accessory firmware updates via iPad Pro’s Smart Connector

Aside from headline features such as Night Shift mode, new 3D Touch shortcuts, Notes improvements and more, the most recent beta of iOS 9.3 has been found to allow the iPad Pro to update accessories' firmware through its Smart Connector.

As noted by German developer Stefan Wolfrum and relayed by Oliver Haslam over at Cult of Mac, Wolfrum was greeted with an “Accessory Update Available” prompt after plugging a Logitech Connect keyboard case into his iPad Pro.

Siri making random outbursts? Here’s the fix

It's happened many times to me before, and I can relate to those that it happens to – you're trying to be quiet in the middle of class or in the middle of a meeting for work, and all of a sudden you hear a random noise and then Siri starts blabbering.

Siri says "I didn't quite get that," or "Sorry, I missed that."

In this tutorial, we'll show you how to solve this problem once and for all.

Deliveries gets massive update with 3D Touch, multitasking & new features

Delivery trackers are invaluable tools you can use on your iPhone or iPad to keep track of your inbound and outbound package deliveries from services like USPS, UPS, FedEx, and others to make sure they get to the places they need to go.

As we shared just a couple days ago, Deliveries by Junecloud is by far one of our favorite apps to do this with, and on Wednesday, Deliveries has received a massive update to version 7.0 with a change log so big we couldn't even fit it on our Mac's screen.

76 percent of devices are now using iOS 9

As measured by the App Store on January 25, 2016, and published on Apple's App Store dashboard for developers, iOS 9 is now powering 76 percent of iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices, a one-percentage point gain versus the 75 percent mark that was recorded two weeks ago.

At the same time, the adoption rate for iOS 8 has dropped from nineteen percent as of January 13, 2016, to seventeen percent, a two-point loss.

Public beta testers: iOS 9.3 beta 2 and OS X 10.11.4 now available

Two days after seeding OS X 10.11.4 El Capitan beta 2 and iOS 9.3 beta 2 to members of the Apple Developer Program, public beta testers who are signed on the Apple Beta Software Program can now freely deploy these new beta builds on their Mac, iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices.

iOS 9.3 beta 2 is available as an over-the-air update in Settings → General → Software Update on enrolled devices. OS X 10.11.4 beta 2 can be downloaded through the Mac App Store's Purchased tab for those who are enrolled in Apple's beta testing program.

Google updates Chrome for iOS with 70% fewer crashes, Spotlight integration and more

Google's mobile Chrome browser was updated this morning in the App Store and the new release promises a whopping 70 percent fewer crashes along with a few other goodies, such as Spotlight Search integration.

Google said that the dramatically reduced crash rate is due to Chrome's adoption of WKWebView, a rendering engine from Apple which was first introduced with the release of iOS 8 back in 2014.

In addition, this release of Chrome for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad should be faster overall, with JavaScript execution now “dramatically faster.”