UI

Enchant upgrades notification aesthetics on jailbroken iPhones

Anthony Bouchard ∙ March 4, 2021

One of my favorite things to do with a jailbroken iPhone or iPad is customize the native user interface — something that Apple doesn’t generally let you do out of the box because they feel that their team of designers know best, and shame on you for even thinking that you might be able to make something look better. But I digress…

Enchant is a newly released jailbreak tweak by iOS developer P2KDev that lets you customize the appearance of your pwned handset’s incoming notifications. With it, you can achieve a wide variety of aesthetics ranging from nearly stock to polarizingly different; whichever floats your boat.

Activator doesn’t yet support iOS 14, but this tweak offers temporary refuge

Anthony Bouchard ∙ March 4, 2021

Now that the unc0ver jailbreak supports up to and including iOS & iPadOS 14.3, we’re seeing a huge influx of new jailbreakers who are wanting to take better advantage of their owned handset(s).

Unfortunately, Ryan Petrich’s venerable Activator tweak, which allows users to map various actions to custom gestures, isn’t yet compatible with iOS or iPadOS 14, and many jailbreakers are looking for alternatives for the time being.

Jailbreakers can customize the Now Playing widget with aquarius

Anthony Bouchard ∙ March 4, 2021

If you’re jailbroken and listen to lots of music, then chances are you interface with the Lock Screen’s Now Playing widget rather often and might take an interest in customizing it.

iOS developer Nico Carbone has just released a new and free jailbreak tweak called aquarius that permits jailbreakers to personalize the Now Playing widget with minimal effort.

This tweak makes it easier to permanently delete photos and videos from your iPhone

Anthony Bouchard ∙ March 3, 2021

Oh wow, I just love the Photos app’s Recently Deleted album — said no one, ever.

Apple incorporated the Recently Deleted album into the Photos app to help prevent users from accidentally deleting important photos or videos with a single tap. In essence, the two-step process allows you to go back and restore something you’ve deleted. But if you’re not clumsy, then this two step process can be more cumbersome than it is useful.

MsgSwap makes it easier to share Photo Library media in Apple’s Messages app

Anthony Bouchard ∙ March 3, 2021

One of my biggest pet peeves when using Apple’s Messages app to send Photos to contacts via iMessage or MMS is that you have to jump through hoops just to open the Photo Library picker.

Users will either tap on the Camera shortcut and then launch their Photo Library from the ensuing Camera viewfinder interface, or they’ll tap on the App Store button to view installed iMessage extensions and visit the Photo Library via the dedicated Photos button.

StripeCount displays the number of installed packages in Zebra

Anthony Bouchard ∙ March 3, 2021

Although Cydia is the default package manager for the checkra1n and unc0ver jailbreaks, Sileo is the default package manager for the Chimera, Odyssey, and Odysseyra1n jailbreaks, it’s not uncommon for jailbreakers to install an alternative package manager such as Zebra.

Zebra is a great option for anyone looking to try a lightweight and third party package manager, but one thing I wish it did out of the box was display how many installed packages I had.

Vinyl shrinks iOS’ oversized Now Playing widget and makes it more customizable

Anthony Bouchard ∙ March 2, 2021

I’ve got nothing against the iPhone’s Now Playing widget; after all, it’s a convenient tool for controlling media playback from the Lock Screen without going through the process of unlocking your device and launching the Now Playing app every time you want to make a small adjustment.

Praise aside, I also agree with anyone who says that the Lock Screen’s Now Playing widget is larger than it needs to be, and that’s one reason why I’m excited about a new and free jailbreak tweak release dubbed Vinyl by iOS developer Lightmann.

This tweak hides iOS 14’s Paste Tips when pasting content from another app

Anthony Bouchard ∙ March 2, 2021

Upon updating to iOS or iPadOS 14, you probably noticed that the operating system automatically displays a prompt at the top of the screen whenever you paste something into an app that you copied or cut from a different app. For this piece, we’ll refer to those prompts as Paste Tips.

Some people enjoy the Paste Tips because it alerts the user to potentially unwanted clipboard access, but others may find it to be somewhat of a nuisance, especially if they do a lot of copying or cutting and pasting. Those in the latter boat may appreciate a newly released and free jailbreak tweak dubbed DisablePasteTips by iOS developer Netskao.

CopyKey makes it easier for jailbreakers to paste text via the keyboard

Anthony Bouchard ∙ March 2, 2021

Anyone who does even the least amount of text editing knows just how important the ability to copy, cut, and paste text is. Unfortunately, the process tends to be cumbersome and time consuming on the iPhone.

Those taking advantage of a jailbreak, including the recently updated unc0ver tool with respect to iOS 14, are likely to appreciate the convenience and satisfaction of a newly released and free jailbreak tweak dubbed CopyKey by iOS developer Chr1s.

HomePlus Pro lets jailbroken iOS 14 users customize the Home Screen’s layout

Anthony Bouchard ∙ March 1, 2021

Longtime jailbreakers will remember that one of the most popular pastimes would have been customizing the Home Screen layout with an arbitrary number of rows and columns to fit the growing number of apps we use on our handsets these days. Some liked higher app icon density on each page, while others preferred to lighten things up.

Last year, iOS developer Kritanta released HomePlus Pro, which offered granular Home Screen layout customization on demand for jailbroken iOS 13 devices. Now that unc0ver has picked up support for iOS 14.0-14.3, it may not come as much of a surprise that HomePlus Pro is available for jailbroken iOS 14 devices as well.

Add a splash of color to the iOS 14 Home Screen’s Dock with ColourMyDock

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated April 16, 2022

If you just jailbroke your iPhone or iPad on iOS or iPadOS 14 with the newly updated unc0ver jailbreak tool this past weekend, then you might be interested in finding some jailbreak tweaks to get your handset customization off to an acceptable start.

With that in mind, we’ll take this moment to recommend a newly released and free jailbreak tweak dubbed ColourMyDock by iOS developer TitanD3v, which allows jailbreakers to colorize their Home Screen’s Dock color with ease.

This tweak lets jailbroken iPadOS 14 users enjoy widgets anywhere on the Home Screen

Anthony Bouchard ∙ Updated July 8, 2021

One of the things I really love about iOS 14 on my iPhone is that I can finally add widgets to any page of the Home Screen. Apple did a beautiful job on making the widget user experience very responsive and fitting those widgets into an otherwise cluttered screen of app icons.

Sadly, the same user experience can’t be appreciated on the iPad, as iPadOS 14 doesn’t let users have widgets on individual Home Screen pages. Instead, widgets are limited to the Today view, just as they always were on iPadOS 13. Bah humbug!