‘VeloxTube for Velox’ adds an enhanced folder to the YouTube app

Velox is perhaps one of the most disappointing “big” tweaks to touchdown in some time. It’s a tweak that possessed tons of potential, but sadly, none of it is being tapped in the way most envisioned. In fact, we’re left with tweaks like VeloxTube for Velox instead.

That’s not necessarily a knock against VeloxTube for Velox — a jailbreak tweak that brings an enhanced folder to the official YouTube App — it’s just that I expected more. Take a look at my video overview of VeloxTube for Velox after the jump, and see what I mean.

Like virtually all of the Velox addons we’ve seen over the past few months, VeloxTube for Velox takes a very lazy approach, and essentially embeds the content of the YouTube app within an enhanced folder. That’s nice and all, but it’s not exactly noteworthy or innovative.

This addon would have been better if you could configure it to do something cool, like pull up a random video based on keywords, or bring up settings for the YouTube app, or basically anything else outside of a lazy embed.

Yes, VeloxTube for YouTube works as you might expect, and yes it works well, but I’m tired of developers maintaining the status quo with a tweak that has so much potential power. It’s sad, really.

Head over to Cydia’s BigBoss repo if you’d like to give VeloxTube a shot. Be sure to share your thoughts on this tweak, and the overall state of Velox in the comment section below.

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‘LiveWire Pro’ brings new unlock animations to iOS

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a new jailbreak tweak that brings new unlock animations to iOS, but LiveWire Pro is trying to reinvigorate the once popular trend. Not to be confused with the peer-to-peer music sharing service, LimeWire, this is a tweak that brings 7 new unlock animations to iOS. Have a look at our video walkthrough inside for more details on what makes LiveWire Pro tick.

Once you install LiveWire Pro, you’ll find a new preference panel for the tweak nestled inside of the stock Settings app. The tweak’s preferences contain all of the necessary settings used to configure the unlock animations.

There are three basic settings contained within LiveWire Pro: a kill switch, a menu to select between seven different animations, and a duration slider. All of the settings can be changed and take effect on the fly, and hence; no respring is required.

The seven included animations are as follows:

• Elevator
• Vault
• Fade Out
• Zoome & Fade
• Shrink & Fade
• Rotate 360 and Fade
• WhirlPool

The latest update to the tweak adds a new Random option as well, allowing you to receive any one of the seven animations at random anytime the device is unlocked. The included duration slider is there to adjust how long the animation takes to complete. Setting it to the furthest end of the scale results in an animation that takes longer to complete, and vice versa.

Personally I find that the Elevator and Vault animations are the best to be included with LiveWire Pro. In fact, the Elevator animation comes bundled in with the free version of LiveWire, which is also available on Cydia’s BigBoss repo.

With so many other jailbreak tweaks that accomplish a similar task, it’s a bit difficult to recommend that you spend $0.99 on LiveWire Pro. It’s not a bad purchase by any means, but I suggest you check out what else is out there before you make the move.

LiveWire Pro, like its free version, is available on Cydia’s BigBoss repo. Let me know what you think about it in the comment section below.

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Swipe to call, text or email in the Contacts app with QuickGestures

When a fan war breaks out over what the ‘best mobile platform’ is, I usually try to stay out of it. I like iOS better than Android, and believe it to be the superior of the two. But I know that’s just my personal opinion, and not a fact.

Truth be told, I actually like quite a few things about Android. The way it handles contacts, for instance, is great. You can text, email or call someone with a quick swipe or tap. It’s too bad I can’t do that in iOS. Or can I?

With this new jailbreak tweak from iLendSoft I can. Well sort of. The package allows you to quickly communicate with your friends and family in the Contacts app using 3 touch gestures: swipe left, swipe right, and long-hold.

Once installed, you’ll find these configurable options in your Settings app, as usual. You can assign 1 of 4 actions to each of the aforementioned gestures: call, message, e-mail, or FaceTime, and there’s a few other miscellaneous toggles.

In my testing, the tweak worked great. I set messaging as the left swipe, calling right swipe, and email long-hold. And sure enough, every time I swiped to the left on a person’s name in Contacts, a composition window popped up.

But as good as it is, I never found it very useful—most of the time I forgot the tweak was even installed. That doesn’t mean that others won’t find it handy though. And if you think that might be you, you can find QuickGestures in the BigBoss repo for $0.99.

Have you tried out QuickGestures yet?

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‘The Quick Brown Fox’ brings new customization options to the stock iOS keyboard

The Quick Brown Fox — it sounds like a weird name for a jailbreak tweak, but you’ll quickly realize that it makes sense due to the fact that it adds some cool new features to the iOS keyboard. The Quick Brown Fox adds new features to your keyboard like Auto Twins, which automatically inserts a closing pair of parentheses or brackets when you typing the opening symbols. There’s also Auto Space, which automatically places a space behind any configured symbol key.

Lastly, and perhaps most significant, you have Jumping Keys. Jumping Keys allows you to configure certain symbols to automatically jump you back to the alpha keyboard once typed. It works exactly like the apostrophe key works on a stock keyboard, but this allows you to configure apostrophe-like action to virtually any symbol key.

The Quick Brown Fox may sound a bit confusing, but that’s what video walkthroughs were made for. Check inside, as we go hands-on The Quick Brown Fox, and showcase how it all works.

So yes, while the Quick Brown Fox sounds like something you’d see when opening up a font, or something you’d type in Mavis Beacon, it’s actually a really cool jailbreak tweak. Due to its name, it’s easy to overlook it, but don’t. After all, it is free on Cydia’s BigBoss repo, and it does some pretty original stuff. What do you think?

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How to quickly share notes on Twitter and Facebook

ShareNotes is a new jailbreak tweak that allows you to share notes on Twitter and Facebook using iOS’ built in share sheet. The sheet is accessible via a tap on the share button in the Notes app, and it features two new buttons for Facebook and Twitter sharing once this tweak is installed.

The stock sharing options for notes are quite limited; you can only share notes via Mail or Messages. This jailbreak tweak opens things up a bit. Take a look inside for screenshots and more info…

One thing to keep in mind when using ShareNotes, is that you must stay under Twitter’s 140 character limit in order to share notes via Twitter. This means that the tweak isn’t smart enough to truncate or use a read more service.

ShareNotes is available for free on Cydia’s BigBoss repo. Let me know what you think in the comment section below.

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Peekly – an awesome new Lock screen theme featuring weather, calendar, and more

Peekly is an awesome new Lock screen theme for WinterBoard. Not only does it look wonderful, but the theme features built in functionality for current weather, forecasts, calendar, RSS feeds, and more.

Like many Lock screen WinterBoard themes, Peekly can be configured using a simple javascript file, which can be edited by means of the text editor bundled with iFile. If you’re looking for a relatively lightweight Lock screen theme that looks absurdly good, then look no further than Peekly. Take a look inside for our full hands-on video review and setup guide.

The first thing you’ll notice about Peekly is how gorgeous it looks. It features a redesigned Lock screen clock, along with a redesigned slide to unlock interface. This is all capped off by a beautiful 8-bit Lock screen wallpaper that compliments the font selections for the clock and date.

But the primary Lock screen page is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Peekly. If you swipe once to the left, you’ll reveal a weather page that displays the current weather for a specific location. Along with the location name, the current temparture, the day’s highs and lows, the current status, and a visual representation of that status — think clouds, sun, etc. — is nestled right on the screen. Again, this is all complimented by a pretty looking 8-bit wallpaper.

But Peekly does more than that, as its name hints to. If you swipe on the weather page once more to the left, you’ll reveal an extended forecast. The extended forecast doesn’t reside on its own dedicated page, meaning that you can’t actually swipe to a standalone extended forecast. What you can do, is “peek” at the forecast by means of a swipe and hold gesture. Watch the video walkthrough above to get a gist as to what I mean.

The weather location can be configured to your liking

The same “peek” action can be performed on the main Lock screen page which houses the Lock screen clock and slide to unlock functions. On an unmodified setup, peeking from the main Lock screen page reveals a simple calendar. This “left peek” page can be customized to house other items like a Twitter feed, RSS feed, Gmail calendar, and more.

While these are nice options, you have to remember that Peekly isn’t like LockInfo, meaning that you can’t interact with the theme at all. Peekly is strictly intended for viewing information, not for interaction. With that in mind, I found the Twitter options and RSS options to be nice, but not exactly functional. Hence, I generally recommend sticking with the stock calendar option.

As you might imagine, lots of configuration can be done with Peekly, but it’s a totally manual affair. You can use iFile to open up the theme’s folder, and alter the settings.js text file to configure things. You can alter the weather location, change the temperature from Celsius to Fahrenheit, replace the clock with a digital clock, add a Twitter feed, RSS feed, Gmail calendar, etc. You can use iFile to easily alter any of these settings.

This is how Peekly is customized

I do recommend that if you’re going to use Peekly, that you install a few additional jailbreak tweaks that make the experience better. For starters, there’s Clock Hide, which hides the stock iOS Lock screen Clock. Then there’s Dim Delay, which let’s you change the amount of time it takes before the Lock screen dims.

If there’s one major gripe with Peekly, it’s the fact that the learning curve might be a bit much for beginners. For starters, the theme isn’t yet available on Cydia. You have to install it directly from the developers, Studio Graphic’s, website. This means that the theme must be downloaded, moved to the var/stash/Themes/ directory, and enabled via WinterBoard. You’ll also have to configure the theme manually by means of the settings.js text file included within the theme’s main folder. Of course this is simple to us experienced jailbreakers, but newer ones may struggle a bit.

Overall, I found Peekly to be a beautiful jailbreak theme. It’s fast, efficient, and it serves a real purpose. If you’re someone who likes the idea of altering the Lock screen, but you don’t want to go all out with something like LockInfo, or IntelliScreen X, then Peekly is worthy of your consideration. Again, if you want to try Peekly, head over to the developer’s website, and download it for free today. Don’t forget to let me know what you think about it in the comments below.

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Quickly enable the Passcode on your device with TapTapPass

By default, it takes you at least 6 steps to enable your device’s Passcode from your Home screen. You have to launch the Settings app, navigate through a couple of screens to the Passcode Lock window, and set it up.

While this process is just fine for folks who keep their iOS devices Passcode-protected at all times, it’s fairly tedious for those that only enable the security feature every once in a while. Luckily, there’s TapTapPass…

TapTapPass is a jailbreak tweak that allows you to enable your device’s Passcode with a tap, gesture or any other Activator function. So if you don’t usually have it on, but need to for some reason, you can do so quickly.

The package doesn’t have a Springboard icon or a Settings pane. You configure everything from within the Activator app, which can be accessed either by its Home screen icon, or the Activator panel in your Settings app.

Once you’ve chosen an Activator function, you’re all set. Now anytime you perform that function—shake your device, double tap your Status bar, etc.—TapTapPass will activate the default iOS Passcode for your device.

Upon unlocking the device with the Passcode, the feature will be disabled. And you can either use the function to lock it again, or use the Sleep button to perform a standard, no-password lock. It’s as simple as it sounds.

I wish the tweak would allow you to use a Simple 4-digit Passcode, but other than that it’s pretty solid. I won’t be keeping it, but if you think you could benefit from something like this, I recommend checking it out.

TapTapPass is available in Cydia, in the ModMyi repo, for free.

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make your status bar clock fade into view

ClockFade is a new jailbreak tweak that forces your status bar clock to fade into view after unlocking to the Home screen. Normally, the status bar abruptly appears with no fade animation, which can be jarring. ClockFade brings smoother fade animations to the table, which are completely adjustable courtesy of preference sliders.

Obviously, this is a small tweak that doesn’t bring much to the table as far as features are concerned, but you might be surprised as to how well it performs, and how good it looks in motion.

 

As you can see, there are two preferences sliders included with ClockFade. The top slider adjusts the tweak’s animation delay, which specifies how long the clock should wait before fading in. The second slider is for fade duration, which specifies how long it takes the clock to fade in.

ClockFade is available for free on Cydia’s BigBoss repo.

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How to stop your iPhone from vibrating on tables

 

 

Don’t you just hate it when you place your iPhone on a table, and notifications start going off? You get that annoying buzzing sound, which is the result of the vibration motor pulsating on the hard table surface. Wouldn’t it be awesome if your iPhone knew when it was laying on a flat surface, thus disabling the vibration? Well, that’s the premise behind MyVibe.

MyVibe is a relatively new jailbreak tweak that’s available for $1.99 on Cydia’s BigBoss repo. Once installed there are quite a few options that can be configured using the tweak’s preference panel. Take a look inside for a video walkthrough showcasing how to use MyVibe, and why it may be beneficial for you.

You won’t notice a bunch of settings contained within MyVibe’s preferences, but it’s a pretty complex tweak when you think about it and really start to break it down. Let’s examine each of MyVibe’s settings.

For starters, there’s the basic functionality from which the tweak’s name is derived, the Table Vibrate feature. Enabling Table Vibrate will disable vibration when your iPhone is placed on a table. It doesn’t matter if the phone is placed facing down, or facing upwards; all vibrations will be silenced once MyVibe recognizes the state of your iPhone, and the vibration suppression kicks in.

To go along with this feature, there is a handy sensitivity option that relegates how much leeway is given to the iPhone’s accelerometer. There are five sensitivity levels included: very low, low, medium, high, and very high. Very high sensitivity means that your iPhone will have to be dead-still, and placed on a flat surface in order for MyVibe to kick in. As you lower the sensitivity, MyVibe kicks in sooner, with less restrictions on slight movements. If you use the lower sensitivity levels, then MyVibe will actually start working by simply holding the iPhone perpendicular to your body in a casual manner.

 

 

From my usage with the tweak, I recommend either high or very high sensitivity. You don’t really want MyVibe activating while holding your phone, as that kind of defeats the purpose of it.

Once MyVibe kicks in and vibration suppression is enabled, you’ll notice a little vibration icon in your iPhone’s status bar. This is a handy visual indicator that MyVibe is actually working, but not all that necessary in the grand scheme of things. Fortunately, there’s an option to disable the status bar icon within the tweak’s settings.

Last but not least, comes MyVibe’s Upside Down Silencer. Enabling this mode will turn on the iPhone’s built in Do Not Disturb functionality when your iPhone is placed upside down on a table. Keep in mind that Do Not Disturb only enables when your iPhone is locked. Even if you place your iPhone upside down on a table, you’ll still continue to receive notifications until you lock your device, or when auto lock kicks in.

MyVibe is a well working jailbreak tweak. It’s especially handy if you’re someone who keeps both vibration and audible tones enabled. For a $1.99 on Cydia’s BigBoss repo, I think it’s a reasonable asking price for a tweak that works pretty much exactly as advertised

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Mix up your iPhone’s Lock screen with Vexil

Vexil is an upcoming jailbreak tweak that adds a ton of features to your iPhone’s Lock screen. If you can see it on the Lock screen, you can probably change it by means of this tweak.

Virtually nothing is off limits here, from the Lock screen clock to the Slide to Unlock nub. It’s not the prettiest, or even the most useful tweak in the world, but with a little effort you can come up with a certified original look for your device.

 

 

As I stated, nothing is off limits here. As you can see from the screenshots above, there are settings that cover virtually every aspect of the Lock screen. Everything from colors, to text, to the appearance or disappearance of certain elements, i.e. the Lock Screen clock, is included here.

 

 

For those of you who prefer a bit more visual flair, there are animations included that can impact the top or bottom half of the Lock screen interface. My primary complaint with the tweak is the amount of options. There are just too many of them, and they’re scattered about in a confusing manner. Although there is a small FAQ included with Vexil, I found myself having to guess at how some of the features worked.

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DirectionBar adds a live compass to your iPhone Status bar

Have you ever wanted to be able to quickly know what directions you’re heading to just by looking at your iPhone Status bar? Well, me neither, but I’m sure there is someone out there with a need for this new tweak by jailbreak dev Rud0lf77 called DirectionBar.

 

 

As you might have guessed by now, DirectionBar adds a handy live compass to your Status bar. Simply pull out your iPhone from your pocket, hit the Home button to wake your device, and look for the little compass pointing to the North…

DirectionBar comes with a set of nine different compass icons, but if that’s not enough for you, you may find some more on Cydia – although I have to say a quick search for “compass icon” on Cydia didn’t return any relevant results. I’m guessing that because the tweak is new, custom compass icons haven’t been added to Cydia yet, and it might just be a matter of time.

Those of you with Photoshop skills can also create their own icons and load them up to /Library/ApplicationSupport/StatusCompass via SSH or your favorite file browser.

 

 

The compass icon is updated in real time but you might notice a slight delay when the device was just unlocked or when the Springboard just started. Even though I haven’t played extensively with the DirectionBar, I’m happy to report that it works just as advertised.

Now there is the battery concern. Will using DirectionBar drain your battery? I’m not sure but what I can tell you is that I lost 4% of battery in the 10-15 minutes I was playing with DirectionBar, although I’ll admit I performed a few resprings, which never really help battery wise.

This being said, you can download DirectionBar for free in Cydia via the ModMyI repo. If you do give it a try, please make sure to share your thoughts about the tweak in the comment section.

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Auxo designer posts new concept video for Lock screen toggles

Sentry, the designer behind Auxo, has been extremely busy this year. In addition to helping design one of the most popular jailbreak tweaks we’ve seen in a long time, he’s also posted a number of well-received iOS concept videos.

And today, we’re adding another concept clip to the list. It’s entitled ‘iOS Lock Screen Toggles,’ and as you might have guessed, it showcases Sentry’s vision for a Lock screen tweak that offers users quick access to Settings toggles…

 

 

In typical Sentry fashion, the video is short and to the point. And while I really like the overall concept—the toggles are easily accessible and don’t take up Lock screen space—I’m not sure I like the design or the size of the actual icons.

 

 

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Cody, there’s already several jailbreak tweaks available that let you access Settings toggles from the Lock screen.” And you’re right. Off the top of my head there’s SwipeCam, PowerLock and SBSettings.

But there are a lot of tweaks out there that perform similar functions to others—but maybe present the function in a different way. This equates to variety and competition, and is one of my favorite things about the jailbreak community.

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GridLock 2.0 Download Available With Full iOS 6 Support

Yes finally it is here, after a long waiting time, the popular jailbreak tweak GridLock 2.0 now download available for iPhone/iPad and iPod Touch running on iOS 6, for those who haven’t heard about GridLock, it is one of the most awesome and popular jailbreak tweaks that gives you the ability to arrange your apps icons anywhere you want..

 

 

 

As I said above, the tweak allows you to put application icons anywhere they want to on a grid on the home screen (like shown above). Normally when you move an application icon, the next icon in line bounces into the place you just dragged an icon out of. Gridlock prevents this, making it so that you can create interesting home screen patterns to make the application icons less of the focus on the home screen and make more room for other things.

The developer behind the tweak re-wrote the tweak from the ground, right now you can get GridLock 2.0 from the Cydia store via BigBoss repo for $1.99.

In addition to the iOS 6 support, it works beautifully on the iPhone 5. Gridlock is compatible with iOS 3 and later. If you’re interested, Gridlock is now available in Cydia’s BigBoss repository!

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top 10 cydia tweaks for iphone

 

 

 

 

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The smart VersaCover for iPad mini

Personally, I am not fond of folding, origami-sytle cases for iPad. Yet, there are a decent amount of them on the market. You know them. They have a folding back that props your iPad in any number of different angles to increase or decrease the viewing angle. Big deal. Up until now, I have never given an origami case a glance. In fact, sometimes I refuse to review them, but I had a hard time telling Moshi ‘no’ for their VersaCover. Finding myself happily surprised, look past the fold to see if these cases are the right fit for you…

The concept and design

The idea is fairly straight forward. Create a case that both holds the iPad and also elevates it with different viewing angles. Simple, yes, but Moshi threw in a couple of added bonuses. Take for instance the extremely low profile (7.95″ x 5.43″ x .047″ or 20.19 x 13.8 x 1.2 cm). I hate cases solely because they add bulk to a beautifully designed iPad mini but this case protects without added heft. The VersaCover utilizes a rigid but thin cloth cover with a translucent polycarbonate case for the back.

The front cover is smart enabled, waking or sleeping as any other smart cover behaves. There is a nice trick to the back case, however. As the casing is polycarbonate, Moshi inlaid a metal strip on the back, causing the cover to stick when wrapped behind the iPad. Sometimes the simplest things make the biggest difference. When being used or carried, the magnet trick prevents this portfolio case from needing a tab, string or elastic band to stay put.

Origami folding techniques provide three different viewing angles as outlined in the video below. Over the past few weeks, I ran this case through its paces and I can vouch for regularly using two of the three angles. “Landscape” became my standard when using the case for almost anything. I am a Flipboard fanboy and spend most of my iPad time reading. Landscape was just as good for my tech blog reading addiction as “Portrait.” The “Typing” angle is a great angle for, well, typing. I also used it to watch videos when I was cooking in the kitchen. While standing at the counter, using landscape provided a more acute viewing angle.

Personal reaction

With a predetermined, yet unfounded, hatred of folding cases, I am shocked I enjoy using the VersaCover. In fact, I hate using any case for my iOS devices and, after reviewing, I tend to let them pile up or collect dust. However, this marks a solid month, going strong with this particular case. I like it for several reasons, the first of which is minimalism. It is not as razor thin as I prefer, but overall, there is not a terrible amount of added bulk. Second, I like six-sided protection for my device. If I am going to use a case, it needs to cover everything. Third, the little magnet on the back that keeps the cover folded back is my new inanimate friend.

Although I immensely enjoy the case, there is room for improvement, starting with the cover. I like the textured feel of a rigid cloth, however, it can catch stains more easily than other materials. In fact, Moshi includes a brief cleaning tip on the product page. After accidentally spilling yogurt on the cover during breakfast, I am pleased the stain came out easily. Avoiding cloth all together may be the best bet.

Additionally, when using the cover in portrait, pressing in the upper right corner can cause the iPad to tip. Now, you aren’t banging your fingers into the screen during normal usage, but an over zealous tap in the wrong place may cause it to tumble.

Conclusion

Available for $49.95 on Amazon, you really need to appreciate every piece of this construction, otherwise you could find a portfolio style case for less. The VersaCover is three different products aptly built into one. If you are looking for a case that is smart enabled, can prop your iPad at several angles, and offers a rigid back casing, this is your case. If you want only one of any three features, just grab a simpler and cheaper case.

If you already enjoy folding cases, this is a great addition to your arsenal. If you are unsure of taking the origami plunge, this is a good place to start. Me? After using it for a month, I am still toting it around, which is a big thumbs up in my book. Thanks to Moshi for sending over this case for review. It has opened my perspective on folding cases and I have enjoyed my time with the VersaCover.

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