These are the latest jailbreak apps and tweaks available for your iPhone or iPad. We save you time by highlighting only the best tweaks.
Anyone that does even the smallest amount of multitasking on their iPhone should be avidly familiar with the App Switcher. That’s because it’s the primary way to move from one app to another without visiting the Home Screen.
In 2016, we showed our readers an innovative mini player widget for jailbroken iPhones dubbed Playtopia that could shrink to a compact size while floating over the top of any interface for convenient music playback control from anywhere.
Today, we’re excited to share that a jailbreak tweak called Playtopia 2 is now available for modern jailbroken handsets running iOS 14 — a project made possible by iOS developers Ginsu and Aviorrok.
If you’re on iOS 14 and you have a jailbreak at your disposal, then you’re probably wondering how you can get the most out of it. The obvious answer is by installing jailbreak tweaks that are relevant to the end user, but with so many releases launching week after week, keeping up with the best ones isn’t easy unless you’re a robot.
The App Switcher is, at least in my opinion, one of the most underwhelming interfaces on the iPhone. The full-screen card switcher interface makes such poor use of the expansive screen real estate that it’s no surprise we see so many jailbreak tweaks attempting to fix this.
The latest of such tweaks is one called Vaon by iOS developer atar13, which not only converts the App Switcher from a card-based interface to a grid-based one, but also adds an iOS 14-style battery widget to the bottom.
Noticeably absent from the plethora of Home Screen widgets offered out of the box by iOS 14 is one for music and Now Playing content.
Given just how much emphasis Apple places on music consumption with regard to its platforms, this seemed like an odd decision on the company’s part.
One of the flagship features of iOS 14 was the ability to add widgets directly to the Home Screen alongside your app icons.
This is something that iPhone users have wanted to do for a very long time, and while Apple certainly did wonders to make it a reality, they also kept the number of native widgets to a minimum.
Jailbreakers, whether they use themes or not, tend to be of the mindset that device customization should be a human right. Apple seems to disagree; but I digress.
One way jailbreakers customize their handsets is by changing their Home Screen’s app icon layout. Unfortunately, Apple designed the Home Screen so that app icons would snap into place without the ability to leave spaces in between app icons.
One of the things I’ve seen a lot of jailbreakers do over the years is change up their Home Screen’s default icon layout. After all, who doesn’t like giving their own device the personalization it deserves?
This capability is possible even on iOS 14 with Apple’s novel Home Screen-based widget system, but various tweak developers have released different jailbreak tweaks with their unique takes on how such a capability should be implemented.
Upon unleashing iOS 14 at the end of last year, Apple introduced a refreshed widget system in which specialized widgets can be placed alongside app icons on the Home Screen instead of being crammed into the totally separate Today page.
Home Screen-centric widgets have been a wishlist item for iPhone users for several years, so this was a dream come true for many. Still, it’s important to note that jailbreakers have enjoyed Home Screen widgets for what feels like forever thanks to tweaks like Velox Reloaded and the likes.
When I first upgraded to iOS & iPadOS 14 last year, I was slightly unimpressed by the appearance of Apple’s native battery widget. Not only is it bland, but it doesn’t even display numeric battery percentages, which I often like to see for myself for peace of mind.
Those interested in upgrading their battery widget on iOS or iPadOS 14 would do good to try a newly released jailbreak tweak called CustomizeBW by iOS developer Miguel, as it provides a bevy of different options for making the native battery widget more aesthetically pleasing to the end user.
We graciously applaud Apple for introducing a worthwhile widget experience in iOS 14. It’s leaps and bounds better than what shipped with iOS 13 and earlier, and thanks to strong-willed app developers, these new widgets are exponentially more versatile than their predecessors.
Kind words aside, one thing that really bugs me about the iOS 14 widget experience is that Apple appears to have made no effort to help legacy widgets conform to the newer design standard. More specifically, when compared side-by-side, newer widgets have a rounder corner radius than legacy ones.
It was only a couple of days ago that we showed you a free jailbreak tweak called CompactBatteryAvocado, which improved the overall look and feel of iOS & iPadOS 14’s native Battery widget by adding numeric battery percentage labels to each item that appears inside of it.
But as it would seem, CompactBatteryAvocado isn’t the only jailbreak tweak in town that can serve the aforementioned purpose. Enter RingPercentLabel, an alternative to CompactBatteryAvocado by iOS developer P2KDev that serves the same purpose, albeit with a slightly different aesthetic.