One of the pillars of the jailbreak community is Activator, a utility allowing iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users to manipulate the various actions and behaviors of their beloved device. It's the basis of so many tweaks out there, and included in that growing list is a brand new entry to the BigBoss repository by the name of App Activate. Simply put, App Activate brings your home screen icons to life, allowing you to access the most relevant element of a given app by double tapping its icon. More details after the break.
iOS, as we know, is an inherently restricted operating system, and one instance where this is perhaps most apparent is when using the keyboard. Of course, the predictive text system has been massively improved from those early generations, but with other mobile OSes allowing users to switch keyboard as easily as changing socks, the lack of customization can make using the iOS keyboard a cumbersome experience. For those jailbroken, all is not lost, and if you regularly use special characters and don't like having to jump between different pages to find them, help is at hand thanks to a jailbreak tweak called AltKeyboard.
Prior to iOS 6, Backgrounder was one of the most popular tweaks in Cydia, and with good reason. Whilst iOS does feature multitasking of sorts, there's no doubting the fact that it's not what some would call proper multitasking.
If you read my reasoning for returning to the jailbreak scene with the iPhone 5 jailbreak release back in February, then you'll know that up until that point I really wasn't sold on the whole jailbreak scene. I'd dabbled in the past, with limited success, and always decided to return to Apple's way of thinking by ditching the jailbreak completely. I'd had battery problems, stability issues and a general feeling of disappointment when jailbreaking, but that all changed in February with the release of Evasi0n. Three months later, I can't see myself ever going back to stock.
Every now and then a new app or tweak comes along that can genuinely be thought of as a game changer. Tweaks like Zephyr and Auxo have changed the way users interact with their hardware and it seems that it's now the turn of Apex Dev Team to grab some praise with the official release of the highly anticipated Velox that breathes new life into app icons on the home screen.
Spotlight search, although not a feature of everybody's iOS-navigating repertoire, is still seen as an important feature of Apple's mobile OS, and although relatively one-dimensional at stock level, the jailbreak scene has certainly found plenty of uses for the native search feature. Those of you who've used Alfred for OS X will be more than aware of its strengths when it comes to speeding up the process of finding exactly what you want, and one Cydia developer has taken the strengths of Alfred and sought to implement them into Spotlight.
There have been plenty of hits and a fair few misses in the last couple of revisions of iOS with regards to the new features, but the consensus of the iOS notification banners introduced with iOS 5 seems to be one of positivity. Their unobtrusive nature allows iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users to continue their task in hand without being interrupted, but despite their discreet demeanor, they are rather bland and one dimensional. Looking to invigorate some life into these plain white banners is Bailey Seymour, a jailbreak developer who has come through with a theming tweak for this particular iOS element called BannerImage.
The so-called 'walled garden' of iOS is hardly renowned for its customizability, but thanks to the freedom brought about by a jailbreak, the look and feel of the Apple mobile OS can be morphed and manipulated in all manner of ways. A new Cydia entry by the name of Accentify is one such tweak, sneaking into the iOS API and delivering universal changes to the entire, predominantly off-blue color scheme. If you've grown somewhat bored with the rather dull, uninspiring appearance of your iOS device, Accentify could be just the lick of paint needed to liven things up.
Message Box, a tweak which allows iOS users to enjoy a full Chat Heads experience system-wide on iOS based on the Facebook app, has just been released, and we've got the details coming up right after the break!
We are, some more quickly than others, gradually adapting to the touch-based keyboard. With that said, we've all cursed the auto spell-checking features of our devices, and at a time when we can carry out so many complicated tasks using our smartphone or tablet, doing something as simple as typing a message or note should not be so trying. TouchPal Keyboard for iOS offers a refined, gesture-based typing experience built very much in the image of Swype for Android, and if you happen to be jailbroken, you can make this intuitive keyboard a system-wide implementation.
