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How to Change Your iPhone App Icons Without Jailbreaking

Alex Heath ∙ Updated February 6, 2016

We Apple users are picky about our aesthetics. Some of us try to pretend that we aren't, but we are. Things like app icons matter to us. Apple doesn't make it easy to customize your iPhone's look on a system mod level, but luckily there are still jailbreak-free hacks out there to taunt Apple's need for aesthetic control.

I'm going to walk you through how to manually change app icons on your iPhone without jailbreaking. There are multiple reasons you may want to change an app icon; you think the developer's icon is ugly, you want a retina display-compatible icon, or you just want to mess with your friend while he's away from his phone. Here's how you do it:

Let’s Be Friends On Twitter

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated September 20, 2016

I've been thinking about that for a while but for some reason I never got to go ahead with it. I just created a list of iDB readers on Twitter. If you read this blog and if you're on Twitter, then you should be on the list!

So far I have only 3 people in this list. That's because I don't know your Twitter username. To get on the list, simply ask me to add you on Twitter by sending a tweet such as "@SebastienPage Hey add me to your iDB list"...

HDR Capabilities Coming to Your Jailbroken iPhone 3G & iPhone 3GS

Guest Author ∙ September 11, 2010

So were you a bit annoyed when Steve Jobs introduced the new HDR features of iOS 4.1 and realized it wouldn't apply to your iPhone 3G or 3GS? Well stop being annoyed because apparently there will be a jailbreak app for that.

BGR highlighted a tweet from iOS developer Will Strafach that states the following:

Is T-Mobile Getting the iPhone 3GS?

Guest Author ∙ September 7, 2010

The tweet says it all. The update was posted by Chris Anderson, editor of Wired. Perhaps he is baiting us but nevertheless it's the first rumor of its kind so what the heck.

Apparently Chris was told by a T-Mobile manager that the iPhone 3GS would be coming to the carrier. Why the company would be getting the year old model of the iPhone instead of the current device is beyond me. I guess that's why they call it a rumor.

Thoughts?

Why is Web Browsing Declining on the iPhone?

Guest Author ∙ Updated March 27, 2018

When the iPhone was introduced back in 2007 Steve Jobs made it known that he thought the phone's best feature was the ability to browse the internet in its entirety. To his credit it was the first device to even come close. As Jobs' idol, Bob Dylan sang, "The times they are a changing".

The Bango Blog offers some insight regarding their newest web browsing statistics that show a decline in web traffic as it relates to content viewed from the iPhone. Should the decline be attributed to the influx in platforms that offer the same style of browsing? Some would argue that systems like Android offer a more comprehensive experience strictly due to their support of Flash...

Official Twitter App for iPhone Now Available

Sébastien Page ∙ May 19, 2010

RIP Tweetie, hello Twitter!

For those of you who don't know, my favorite Twitter app for iPhone, Tweetie, was acquired by Twitter a few weeks ago. Twitter then rebranded the app to call it "Twitter".

If like me you're a pretty heavy Twitter user, you might be worried that Twitter will kill the "quote" feature to make it like their own native retweet feature.

Before being bought out by Twitter, the app was available for $2.99, but it is now free. You can download it directly from this link.

Note that it is not available everywhere yet. Although the link works, I haven't been able to download it. I guess it needs to propagate through all the servers of the App Store.

30 iPhone Experts to Follow on Twitter

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated November 12, 2019

I am often asked on Twitter who people should follow for good iPhone information. I thought it would be useful to create a list of my favorite iPhone people on Twitter. You may follow all these people in one click by following my iPhone List on Twitter.

I included myself on this list but you're already following me on Twitter, right?

30 iPhone People to Follow on Twitter MacRumors Gizmodo Just Another iPhone Blog Simple Reviews iSmashPhone Apple Insider The Unofficial Apple Weblog Apple iPhone School TiPB iPhone Alley Mac World iPhone in Canada iPhone Savior iPhone Hacks FSMdotCOM iPhone CTO KRAPPS The App Era Simon Blog 9 to 5 Mac iClarified iPhone Dev Team MuscleNerd ziPhoneApps iEvoluti0n Mod My i AppAdvice Appy Sebastien Page iPhone in Canada

If you have people you'd like to see on this list, please add their Twitter username in the comments.

Dear #Tweetie Developer, Please Bring The Old RT Feature Back in Tweetie 2

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 23, 2016

This post is a call to action to anyone who uses one of the best Twitter iPhone apps out there: Tweetie 2. Note that if you don't use Tweetie, you can still help. Read on for more details...

Since Atebits launched the version 2 of Tweetie, they crippled a key feature of the application: the RT (retweet) feature. In the old version, you could RT a tweet by simply tapping "Retweet". It would then look like this:

RT @tweetie I should improve the RT feature on #Tweetie2

In the new version of Tweetie, you have 2 different options to retweet. None of them really fit me or most power users. You now have the option to "Retweet" using Twitter's new RT feature, which 64% of users don't like, or you can use the "Quote" option, which is not really a retweet and adds the odd "/via @username" at the end of you tweet.

A quick search on Twitter shows that I am not the only one disliking the new way Tweetie handles retweets and I was thinking we should tell the developer that we want the old RT feature back.

The best way to get heard is to retweet the hell out of this article so @Atebits (the developer) or @Tweetie hear us. Hopefully the developer will listen to the community and bring the old RT method back to life.

If you are on Twitter, please help us out by clicking here to retweet this article (there are also 2 RT buttons on this page). Thank you in advance for your help!

The Best Twitter App for iPhone

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated March 18, 2019

There are hundreds of Twitter apps for iPhone in the App Store but after weeding out those with useless features, bad UI and the such, it basically comes down to a handful of applications that deserve our attention.

I've been asking people on Twitter what's their favorite iPhone Twitter app and I've been keeping track of the results. I've also had a close look at these 2 polls to come up with what I think is the ultimate list of the best iPhone apps for Twitter.

Of course we all have our favorites (mine is Tweetie 2), but we have to agree that the following apps are "la creme de la creme" of Twitter clients on the iPhone. For each application, I will also highlight what YOU like about them, according to my survey on Twitter.

Tweetie’s “Secure Connection Failed” Is Driving Me Nuts

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated January 24, 2016

I am a big Twitter user and I do most of my tweeting using Tweetie, which is my favorite Twitter app for iPhone. Recently I've been getting the same error more and more often and it's getting very annoying: Secure Connection Failed.

I dug a bit into the problem and found out that I am not the only one having this Secure Connection Failed issue. Tweetie's account on Twitter says that "it's a problem on Twitter's end, they're tracking it down now" and they suggest that anyone who gets this error sends their IP address to contact@atebits.com.

First, I don't believe the problem is on Twitter's end. If it was, other iPhone Twitter app would have the same issue. Second, how am I supposed to email them my IP address when the problem mostly appears over 3G, which means I have a different IP address every time I make a data connection?

This problem has been going on for the past few weeks and it seems it's getting worse. It's really disappointing that Ate Bits, the developers of Tweetie, are not taking a more proactive role in this matter. I don't expect much from a free app, but when I pay $3 for an application, I expect it to work flawlessly.

Have you guys encountered this issue as well? If you don't use Tweetie, what Twitter application do you use? Is your iPhone jailbroken?

Update: Looking a the reactions on Twitter, it is clear that this problem also appears on other Twitter apps. My apologies to Ate Bits for thinking they were not doing their best. The problems does seem to come from Twitter itself after all.

Get Twitter Push Notifications With Boxcar

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated May 26, 2017

Boxcar is a new iPhone application that sends push notifications for Twitter. When someone DMs or @replies you, you will get a push notification in the form of a a text box and a sound notification. Tweets pushed to you can be opened in Tweetie or Twitterrific for now, with support for more apps coming soon.

It's not real time push as notifications take about a minute to be pushed to your iPhone but it still works great. The only downside I see in this app is that these push notifications can quickly become overwhelming if you have many people @replying or DMing you. For someone like me, Twitter push notifications make my ADD even worse...

I really like how the app works but it's not for me. Do you really need to be notified of every new tweet you receive?

You can download Boxcar from iTunes for $1.99.

TwitVid Sends Videos to Twitter Directly From Your iPhone

Sébastien Page ∙ Updated May 26, 2017

TwitVid is a new application that allows you to send videos from your iPhone 3GS to your Twitter account.

TwitVid is very simple to use. Launch the app, select a video to upload or record a new one, tap "choose", add your tweet's text and that's it. It will send the tweet with a short link to your video.

When people click on the link, they are taken to TwitVid's website where they can watch the video, and even chat about it. The video and the chatroom can be embedded in any website, which I think is a really neat feature.

If people click on the video link from an iPhone (ie Tweetie), it will launch the video directly from the app and return to it at the end of the video.

I tried to upload the same video over wifi and over 3G. It took about 1 minute to upload a 1 minute video over wifi, while it took about 3 minutes to upload the same video over 3G. All in all, I think the upload time is very reasonable.

Below is the video embedded.

You can download TwitVid for free from the App Store.

Let me know what you think.