In a day and age where the iPhone is becoming more gesture-based, it peeves me that the Cydia app on jailbroken handsets hasn’t adopted more gesture-driven controls.
Perhaps one of the most obvious gesture controls that Cydia could benefit from is Pull to Refresh in the Changes tab – this would replace having to manually tap on the Refresh button at the top-left of the app just to see if there are any new jailbreak tweaks or extensions worth installing.
Despite the fact that force-closing all the apps in your App Switcher isn’t the best of practices on the iOS or iPadOS platform, it’s still something that I continue to see people do time and time again.
Perhaps the most painful part of it all is watching when someone accidentally force-closes an app that they didn’t intend to – usually their most recently-used app which they were trying to improve the performance of by freeing up system memory in the process of force-closing all their other apps.
A brand-new one-click application for macOS called Betelguese by @23Aaron_ and @hbkirb is now available that lets checkra1n’d iPhone and iPad users install Odysseyra1n on their handset via the convenience of a graphical user interface (GUI) as opposed to pasting lengthy and complicated commands into a traditional command line interface (CLI).
When Betelguese is complete, your checkra1n jailbreak transforms into Odysseyra1n, which means that it will utilize the Procursus bootstrap with Sileo as the default package manager and libhooker as the tweak injection method. These will replace Cydia and Cydia Substrate or Substitute for tweak injection — the process that handles your jailbreak tweaks — whichever of the latter you might’ve had installed at the time.
Moving right along, Apple is seeding the latest beta versions of its upcoming updates to its operating systems, including iOS, watchOS, and macOS.
Odysseyra1n is a custom Procursus-based bootstrap for checkra1n devices that installs Sileo for package management and libhooker for tweak injection. Previously, Odysseyra1n needed to be installed via Terminal with a command line interface. But that changes starting today with the release of Betelguese.
Betelguese is, in essence, a macOS-supported one-click Odysseyra1n installer for all iPhones and iPads running iOS or iPadOS 12, 13, or 14 that have already been jailbroken with checkra1n.
Just last week, SakuRα Development launched an all-new semi-untethered jailbreak tool dubbed kok3shi for 64-bit iOS 9.3-9.3.6 devices. It was a bit of a surprise given that most of today’s jailbreak-centric news revolves around iOS & iPadOS 13 or 14.
But as is the case with any initial jailbreak release, it would t be long before kok3shi received its first update. As such, SakuRα Development released a second public beta version of the kok3shi jailbreak, officially bringing it up to version 1.0 beta 2.
As much as I like the native Safari web browser on iOS and iPadOS, I’ve come to recognize that it’s far too easy to be jettisoned over to a new tab upon accidentally tapping on an advertisement or link on a web page.
Some third-party web browsers from the App Store already include native functionality that can stop this behavior from irritating the end user. But having a separate web browser app installed on my phone solely for this purpose just makes me feel like I’m installing another unnecessary app to clutter my Home Screen.
The iPad offers the same useful Control Center interface that the iPhone and iPod touch do, and while that’s great, it’s also the biggest problem.
While Control Center’s features are both convenient and useful, the issue I take with the interface on the iPad is that it leaves so much screen real estate unused. In fact, it’s literally an iPhone’s Control Center interface crammed at the edge of the iPad’s large display.
The very first thing that most iPhone and iPad users do after opening a new tab in Safari is tap on the URL bar at the top of the interface to begin entering a new website URL or search query. With that in mind, wouldn’t it make perfect sense if the keyboard popped up automatically upon launching a new tab?
If you answered yes to that question, then I’d lean to agree with you. In fact, I find it rather odd that Apple hasn’t thought around the same lines.
Many jailbreakers were saddened when developer Matt Clarke reaffirmed that the ReProvision on-device app signing service that many used to keep their jailbreak apps signed without a computer wouldn’t receive any further official updates; not even to fix the post-January 28th app-crashing issue triggered by a server-side change on Apple’s behalf. It was henceforth officially EOL (end of life).
Riley Testut’s AltServer and AltStore combo offered a viable alternative to ReProvision, however it too was impacted by the same issue. The only difference? AltServer and AltStore received updates to address Apple’s server-side changes so that the end user wouldn’t suffer app crashes, while ReProvision did not. On the other hand, a third-party band-aid was later made available for ReProvision users.
The jailbreak community has been particularly charged over the course of the past several weeks following unc0ver’s newfangled support for iOS & iPadOS 14.0-14.3 and the teasers comprising of CoolStar’s upcoming iOS & iPadOS 14.0-14.3 jailbreak.
Of course, the excitement surrounding these jailbreaks and the hype has also resulted in an explosion of recent iOS 14-centric jailbreak tweaks. This roundup will go over all the latest ones released between Monday, March 15th and Sunday, March 21st.
New in iOS 14 are colorful Status Bar-based dot indicators that alert you to when your handset’s camera or microphone are being used – a commendable feature with respect to privacy.
By default, the camera indicator dot appears green, while the microphone indicator dot appears a light orange. Unfortunately, there’s no way to change these colors on a stock device.