Review

Melody brings Now Playing album art to more parts of iOS

Anthony Bouchard ∙ September 1, 2020

Those who use their iPhones to listen to their favorite music day in and day out are more likely to recognize the finer details of the music consumption experience than those who just listen to a song here and there. With that in mind, iOS developer Dylan West (iOSthemem0d) has released a new jailbreak tweak called Melody that tries to make the user experience even more enjoyable for hardcore music consumers.

Melody works by bringing the Now Playing track’s album artwork to more places in iOS. As depicted in the screenshot examples above, “more places” refers to quite a few different areas, including but not limited to:

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Enlighten improves the low light camera performance of jailbroken iPhones

Anthony Bouchard ∙ August 31, 2020

Every year when Apple announces a new flagship iPhone, you can bet that the company has poured tons of money into research and development to improve the photo quality of the rear-facing camera. While it doesn’t always come by way of more megapixels, the company’s software-centric photo processing can be top notch – except when it’s not.

iOS developer XCXiao recognized that something needed to be done about the iPhone’s somewhat dismal low-light photography performance, and consequently created a new jailbreak tweak called Enlighten to improve this particular aspect of iPhone photography. Examples of the tweak at work, compared against Apple’s existing Night Mode feature, are depicted below.

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Jailbreak tweaks of the week: Crane, Minotaur, Safari Downloader+, and more…

Anthony Bouchard ∙ August 30, 2020

Those rocking jailbroken iPhones and iPads are often antsy to download the latest and greatest jailbreak tweaks so that they can get the most out of their pwned handset(s). On the other hand, it can be difficult to keep track of new releases and determine what the best of those are.

In this piece, we’ll be curating a list of all the latest jailbreak tweak releases from Monday, August 24th to Sunday, August 30th. As usual, we’ll kick things off by talking about our favorite releases at the start and then wrap things up with an outline of the rest near the end.

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Choose your favorite iPhone keyboard UI for every situation with Keyboard Controller

Anthony Bouchard ∙ August 30, 2020

As many smartphone users already know, one of the major advantages to using a software-based keyboard as opposed to a hardware-based keyboard is that the interface can dynamically change depending on what you might be doing on your device. For example, a web browser’s keyboard might display more URL-centric input methods while a number input interface’s keyboard might display only numbers rather than the full alphabet.

iOS developer Tomasz Poliszuk knew that some of these keyboard interfaces could be helpful in more places than one, and unfortunately, Apple doesn’t provide users with any way of choosing which dynamic keyboard interface appears where. With that in mind, a newly released and free jailbreak tweak dubbed Keyboard Controller was conceived.

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Access missed notifications via the Status Bar with Minotaur

Anthony Bouchard ∙ August 29, 2020

Notifications are an essential aspect of owning a smartphone, and the iPhone’s Notification Center interface does a fair job of merging all your missed notifications into one convenient place, some would argue that Apple could do better. iOS developer Muirey03 would be one of such people, and consequently, a newly released jailbreak tweak dubbed Minotaur was conceived.

Minotaur was designed to provide a new way of viewing and interacting with missed notifications to your iPhone. It works by letting users quickly view and manage missed notifications via a convenient lightweight interface that lives in your handset’s Status Bar.

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This tweak upgrades Safari’s download manager with media importing & more

Anthony Bouchard ∙ August 27, 2020

When Apple released iOS & iPadOS 13 last Summer, one of the exciting new features that the company added to the iPhone and iPad experience for the very first time was a built-in download manager for the native Safari web browser. As necessary as this was to make Apple’s platforms both usable and competitive with the rest of the mobile device market, it still left quite a bit to be desired — par for the course when it comes to Apple.

Jailbreakers have significantly more options to choose from when it comes to augmenting this user experience, and with the help of a recently-updated jailbreak tweak dubbed Safari Downloader+ by iOS developer Jalal Ouraigua, jailbreakers can both expect more and get it, especially in terms of the Safari file-downloading experience. The all-new version 5.0 of the Safari Downloader+ adds full support for iOS & iPadOS 13 for the first time.

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PowerUp can help jailbreakers charge their iPhones faster

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated December 6, 2021
Low Power Mode.

My iPhone's battery often finds itself scrambling to catch a charge before I leave for the day, whether it’s an all-day outing or a short trip to the grocery store. In any case, it would be helpful if my iPhone could charge faster than it already does out of the box, and it’s axiomatic that most iPhone users would agree.

On stock devices, users could enable Low Power Mode while charging to juice up their handset’s battery faster, but if you’re jailbroken, then you can take advantage of a far more effective solution that comes in a form of a new and free jailbreak tweak dubbed PowerUp by iOS developers Kurrt and Squiddy.

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Carrierizer2 can replace your Status Bar’s carrier text with something better

Anthony Bouchard ∙ August 25, 2020

Customizing the Status Bar’s carrier text is a modification that hasn’t lost even an ounce of its popularity since the dawn of iPhone jailbreaking more than decade ago. How you go about it, on the other hand, depends entirely on you.

Carrierizer2 is a newly released and free jailbreak tweak by iOS developer CydiaGeek that lets pwned iPhone users customize their Status Bar’s carrier text in more ways than one. Whether you prefer keeping things simple by replacing the carrier text with a custom text string or something more advanced like your IP address or temperature, this tweak brings a lot to the table that might be worth checking out.

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Lyrication v2 adds slick music lyric support iOS’ Now Playing interfaces

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated October 16, 2024

Music enriches our lives at a spiritual level, and that’s one of the reasons why it can be so enjoyable to turn on the radio when you’re at work or undertaking a menial task. But if you’ve ever listened to a song and couldn’t distinguish its lyrics before, then you’d understand easy access to song lyrics is such an imperative ingredient for the ideal mobile music player, much like your iPhone.

Many music streaming applications already come with lyric functions out of the box, but this only applies to when you’re in that particular app. Apple could and should make the user experience more useful by allowing lyric viewing from the Now Playing widget anywhere in iOS, and that’s one reason why a free jailbreak tweak called Lyrication v2 by iOS developer Marcel Braun exists.

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Jailbreak tweaks of the week: Comet, Merriam, and more…

Anthony Bouchard ∙ August 23, 2020

Got a jailbroken iPhone or iPad, but aren't sure what to do next? This roundup will showcase all the latest jailbreak tweaks in an easy-to-digest list so that you can discern what your next install should be.

As always, we'll kick things off by discussing our favorite releases first. Afterward, we'll outline the rest of this past week's releases in alphabetical order.

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