Review

Jailbreak tweaks of the week: Ekip, Grounded, Snoverlay 2, & more…

Anthony Bouchard ∙ December 6, 2020

Now that the Odyssey jailbreak tool supports up to iOS & iPadOS 13.7 on all compatible devices, more avid jailbreakers have access to the perks of a seemingly endless cache of jailbreak tweaks and extensions that can be used to make their handset more unique.

In this roundup, we’ll discuss the latest jailbreak tweak releases from Monday, November 30th to Sunday, December 6th. As always, we’ll start things off with a brief overview of our favorite releases and then wrap things up with an outline of the rest and other important jailbreak news tidbits afterward.

Put your notched iPhone’s Tab Bar on a diet with Home Slice

Anthony Bouchard ∙ December 6, 2020

If you’ve owned any of Apple’s notched iPhones, be it the tried-and-true iPhone X, the shiny new iPhone 12 Pro, or a device residing somewhere between the two aforementioned handsets, then you likely know first-hand just how much real estate iOS wastes in the Tab Bar region of the display.

Fortunately for anyone who might be jailbroken, there’s a way to reclaim all of those wasted pixels, and it exists in the form of a newly released and free jailbreak tweak dubbed Home Slice by iOS developer biD3V.

Jailbreakers can get festive with Snoverlay 2, which adds animated snowflakes to any interface

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated February 17, 2022

The most wonderful time of the year is rapidly approaching once more, and lots of families will be turning to festivities as a means of drowning out the absolute horrors that 2020 brought to families all over the globe.

If you’re one of the millions who will be celebrating the holidays this year, then why stop at household decorations and holiday baking when you can trick out your iPhone or iPad too? Apart from setting a festive wallpaper, a newly released and free jailbreak tweak called Snoverlay 2 by iOS developer Ryan Nair can make animated snowflakes rain over the top of every interface you view on your handset.

AnimeMyBadges brings a unique breathing animation to notification badges

Anthony Bouchard ∙ December 5, 2020

After receiving a notification from one of your apps, iOS and iPadOS put a badge on the Home Screen’s app icon to alert you to missed and/or pending notifications. The badge appears as a static red dot at the top-right of the icon, and while we’ve seen jailbreak tweaks-a-plenty that permit color customization of these badges, tweaks for animating said badges seem to be far less common.

Enter AnimeMyBadges, a newly released and free jailbreak tweak by iOS developer Antony M that gives Your handset’s notification badges a unique breathing animation that causes them to wax and wane with what can only be described as the in-and-out rhythm of a breath.

AngryDuolingo makes the Duolingo app icon look angry when notifications are missed

Anthony Bouchard ∙ December 5, 2020

Duolingo is perhaps one of the most popular apps for learning a new language available on the iOS and iPadOS platforms, and despite this fact, the app appears to lack the types of fun and quirky Easter eggs that you might come to expect from an app of this caliber.

That’s where a newly released and free jailbreak tweak called AngryDuolingo by iOS developer Idefix2020 comes into play. It makes using the Duolingo app more fun by giving the Home Screen icon some added character as the app accumulates more and more missed notifications.

LongKeys makes it easier to type several instances of the same Emoji

Anthony Bouchard ∙ December 3, 2020

Emojis have quickly transformed into one of the most popular ways to share expressions and reactions via messaging and social media platforms. If you’ve ever wanted to enter several of the same Emoji into a text field, however, then you’d find yourself tapping the Emoji key of your choosing repeatedly until satisfied.

LongKeys is a newly released and free jailbreak tweak by iOS developer maximehip that tries to take the edge off of this user experience by allowing typists to simply tap and hold on an Emoji key of their choosing to input several instances of that particular Emoji into the text field all at once.

Grounded bars access to vital Control Center toggles without authentication

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated June 2, 2021

I love how convenient Control Center makes it to toggle my iPhone or iPad’s controls on or off in a pinch, but I’m almost certain that anyone who’d grab my iPhone when I’m not looking might feel exactly the same way. In fact, Control Center makes it far too easy for a thief or mischief-maker to toggle Airplane Mode as a hindrance to handset recovery, and that’s enough to make anyone second-guess the added convenience…

Grounded is a brand new and free jailbreak tweak by iOS developer biD3V that’s designed to prevent such issues from living rent-free in your head. The tweak works by allowing users to make certain Control Center toggles unusable as long as your iPhone or iPad is locked, but they become usable the moment you authenticate yourself.

Tranzlo makes it easy for jailbreakers to translate text in almost any iOS app

Anthony Bouchard ∙ December 1, 2020

Being bilingual has its perks, but since not everyone has the luxury of knowing more than one language by heart, translation services often lend assistance to those wanting to know how to say something in another language. There’s just one problem: accessing said translation services can be cumbersome, often requiring the user to visit a website or switch to another app.

Here to help with the aforementioned dilemma is Tranzlo, a newly released and free jailbreak tweak by iOS developer MiRO92 that aspires to make language translation much less of a chore on iPhones and iPads.

Ekip brings tighter integration between your jailbroken iPhone and your Mac

Anthony Bouchard ∙ November 30, 2020

AirDrop, iCloud, and a bevy of other services provided by Apple have helped to create a nearly seamless user experience for those owning both an iOS device and a Mac. But if you’ve ever wanted a tighter integration than what already exists, then you’d be S.O.L., at least… without the help of a jailbroken handset.

Fortunately for those who do have jailbroken handset(s) at their disposal, a newly released jailbreak tweak dubbed Ekip by iOS developer maximehip can upgrade the level of integration that users might come to expect while using their iPhone or iPad and their Mac in the same general vicinity.

Upgrade your jailbroken iPhone’s Do Not Disturb indicator with Lune

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated October 27, 2021

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.

Jailbreak tweaks of the week: Boardy, iPadSwitcher, JBStatusNotifier, & more…

Anthony Bouchard ∙ November 29, 2020

The jailbreak community has been filled with all kinds of interesting news recently, with the release of a new iOS 13.5.1-13.7-facing exploit and further updates to popular jailbreak tools like Odyssey to support it. But perhaps the most exciting thing about all of this is the jailbreak tweak side of things — the meat and potatoes that makes jailbreaking worth it.

In this roundup, we’ll talk about all the latest jailbreak tweak releases in one convenient place so that you won’t have to bother searching for all of it yourself. This roundup will encompass all the latest jailbreak tweak releases between Monday, November 23rd and Sunday, November 29th. So without further ado, let’s get started!

iPadSwitcher ports the iPad’s superior App Switcher UI to pwned iPhones

Anthony Bouchard ∙ November 28, 2020

Love it or hate it, the App Switcher is something we use every day while interacting with our iPhones. Not only does it provide a rapid way of returning to recently used applications, but it also lets users force-quit those that aren’t currently needed. Unfortunately, the App Switcher user experience isn’t identical from one platform to another…

Anyone who owns an iPad in addition to an iPhone would be able to attest to just how superior the iPad’s App Switcher user experience feels. Fortunately for jailbreakers, a newly released and free jailbreak tweak dubbed iPadSwitcher by iOS developer dpkg_ can bring that same user experience to pwned iPhones.