If you are anything like me, then you will appreciate the little Cydia tweaks that bring small changes to the way iOS operates, as well as finding yourself drawn to extensions that enhance the visual appearance of the OS in subtle but noticeable ways. Don’t get me wrong here, the larger more-in-your-face tweaks obviously have their benefits, and can be extremely helpful to some people, but it tends to be the more intricate, small and useful packages that stand the test of time.
The SwipeBright tweak that has found its way onto Cydia is a prime example of one of these simple but extremely useful tweaks and is an implementation of the brightness controls that I personally have been waiting for. When installed, SwipeBright simply allows the user to control the level of the display’s brightness by making a simple left and right swipe gesture directly onto the status bar at the top of the display. The gestures are there to represent an actual swipe on the brightness slider, meaning that a right-hand (left to right) swipe on the status bar will increase the brightness whereas a left (right to left) swipe will produce the opposite result and dim the display’s brightness.
Although not really required, SwipeBright installs with its own configurable preferences bundle directly within the native Settings app. The first of these settings allows the user to simply toggle the tweak on or off, something which I am an advocate for and believe all Cydia tweaks should come with. The second option allows users to restrict the tweak to the home screen only, meaning that SwipeBright would only be active when one of the user’s home screen is visible. If this option is set to off then the tweak can be invoked via the status bar whilst inside an app and at the device’s lock screen, as well. The third and final option relates to the tweak’s Deadzone sensitivity, and refers to how sensitive the status bar actually is to sliding. When the sensitivity slider is set to a higher level, the user will need to slide their finger more to invoke the tweak and vice versa.
SwipeBright is one of those useful but minimalistic tweaks that looks to be very well implemented and something most users will find useful. The only issue that I experienced, was needing to set an alternative Activator option for SBSettings due to the fact that it used a left swipe on the status bar to activate the drop down. SwipeBright is available from the BigBoss repository at a cost of $0.99 and is compatible with iOS 4 and above.
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