Jailbreak!

Ida Swarczewskaja

2 | J!"#$%&!'!

Contents

1 Jailbreak Explained 13

1.1 What Is Jailbreak? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

1.2 What Is Not Jailbreak? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

1.2.1 Unlocking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

1.2.2 Cracking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

1.3 Why Jailbreak? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

1.3.1 New Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

1.3.2 Personalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

1.3.3 Millions Can Not Be Wrong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

1.4 Why Not Jailbreak? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

1.4.1 No Warranty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

1.4.2 Does Not Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

1.4.3 Illegal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

1.4.4 Safety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

1.5 Is It for Me? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

2 Jailbreaking Your Device 19

2.1 iPhone, iPad and iPod Models and iOS Versions . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

3

2.1.1 Jailbreak Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

2.1.2 Reverting iOS Versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

2.2 Time to Jailbreak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

2.2.1 Backup Your Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

2.2.2 Using evasi0n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

2.2.3 Using Absinthe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

2.2.4 Redsn0w . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

2.3 Futures Updates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

2.3.1 Not Upgrading iOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

2.3.2 Enable Future Downgrades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

2.3.3 Upgrade iOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

3 Cydia 31

3.1 First Launch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

3.2 Apps, Tweaks, Packages and Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

3.3 Upgrade Cydia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

3.4 User Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

3.5 Searching for an App . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

3.6 Installing a Free App . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

3.7 Updating Installed Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

3.8 Removing Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

3.9 Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

3.9.1 Default Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

3.9.2 Editing a Source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

3.9.3 Adding a Source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

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3.10 Cydia Accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

3.10.1 Creating an Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

3.10.2 Purchasing an App . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

3.10.3 Using Multiple Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

3.10.4 Buying apps Outside Cydia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

3.11 Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

4 Themes and Visual E!ects 49

4.1 SpringBoard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

4.2 Cydia Theme Store . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

4.2.1 Featured Cydia Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

4.3 WinterBoard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

4.3.1 WinterBoard Visual E!ects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

4.3.2 Installing WinterBoard Theme from Cydia . . . . . . . . . . . 53

4.3.3 Best WinterBoard Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54

4.4 DreamBoard Theme Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

4.4.1 Best DreamBoard Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

4.4.2 Installing a DreamBoard Theme from Cydia . . . . . . . . . . 61

4.5 Theme Stores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

4.5.1 CodeThemed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

4.5.2 Theme Outlet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

4.5.3 Theme It . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

4.6 Create Your Own Theme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

4.7 Customizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

4.7.1 Customize the Boot Logo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

4.7.2 Customize Fonts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

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5 Tweak Your Device 87

5.1 Mobile Substrate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

5.2 Widgets and Noti)cations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

5.2.1 Settings in Noti)cations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

5.2.2 Widgets for Noti)cations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

5.2.3 Add Widgets in Status Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

5.3 Home Screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92

5.3.1 More Icons in Dock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

5.3.2 More Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

5.3.3 Rotation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

5.4 Multi-Tasking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

5.5 Shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

5.6 Voice and Text Input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

5.6.1 Lowercase Keyboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

5.6.2 Swiping Text Cursors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

5.6.3 Perfect Auto-Correction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

5.6.4 Predictive Input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

5.6.5 Voice Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

5.7 Create Your Own Tweak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

5.7.1 Flex Cloud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

5.7.2 Create Your Tweak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104

6 The Apps You Missed 107

6.1 SMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

6.2 Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

6.3 Video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

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6.4 Gaming Emulators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

6.5 Tethering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

6.6 Phone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

7 iPad 117

7.1 Tweaking the User Experience on iPad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

7.1.1 Run iPhone Apps Natively . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

7.1.2 Email . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

7.1.3 Display Noti)cations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

7.1.4 Keyboard Customization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

7.2 Themes for iPad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120

7.2.1 A Tour of Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

7.2.2 Installing OS X Pad HD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

7.3 The iPad as a Computer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

7.3.1 Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

7.3.2 Connect a Mouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125

8 Files and Synchronization 127

8.1 Files Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

8.2 Managing Files with iFile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

8.2.1 iFile Tour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

8.2.2 Safari Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130

8.3 Syncing Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

8.4 Backup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

8.4.1 Backup for Free . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

8.4.2 PKGBackup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

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9 Speed and Battery life 139

9.1 Making the Phone Faster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

9.1.1 Accelerating Web Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

9.1.2 Accelerating the Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

9.1.3 Scrolling Faster . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

9.2 Saving on Radio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

9.2.1 Use Radio Less Often . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

9.2.2 Save Bandwidth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

9.3 Monitoring Battery Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146

10 Privacy and Security 147

10.1 Is There a Problem? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

10.2 Accessing the Command Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

10.2.1 Basic Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

10.2.2 Going Further . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

10.2.3 Change the Root Password . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

10.3 Protect Your Jailbreak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

10.3.1 Hide the Jailbreak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

10.3.2 Trust Your Cydia Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153

10.3.3 Trust Your Apps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

10.4 Protect Your Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

10.4.1 Track Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

10.4.2 Lock Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

10.4.3 Make Your Life Easier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

11 Troubleshooting and Support 157

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11.1 Safe Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

11.2 Tracking Faulty Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

11.3 Going Back to Jail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

11.3.1 Restoring iOS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

11.3.2 Device Firmware Update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

11.3.3 iTunes Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

11.4 Getting Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

12 Conclusion 165

12.1 Apps Covered in This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

12.2 Going Beyond the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

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c!2013, Ida Swarczewskaja

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by anyelectronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or informationstorage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the author.

Cover by Ida Swarczewskaja.

First edition.

ISBN-13: 978-1-483915203

ISBN-10: 1483915203

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5

Tweak Your Device

We started playing with themes and skins. In this chapter, we take a tour of thetweaks that considerably enhance your user experience. Installing and playing withthese mostly free packages will make you familiar with more features of your jail-broken device.

5.1 Mobile Substrate

Before we move forward, let us quickly explain how the tweaks mechanism works.In the previous chapter, we learned about the theme engines: WinterBoard andDreamBoard. The tweaks also have their engine, which is MobileSubstrate. It isa framework written by Saurik. Simply put, MobileSubstrate enables to patch thenormal behavior of any apps, including the internal iOS apps such as SpringBoard.

The framework, which is free and open source, is made of three components:

1. MobileHooker, which enables to replace system functions.2. MobileLoader, which loads patches into apps.3. Safe mode, an important feature which catches tweaks that fail by putting the

device in safe mode.

We will see later in Chapter 11 (page 157) how to use “Safe mode”. Let’s jump rightnow to the tweaks, as you of course don’t need to know howMobileSubstrate worksto use them.

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5.2 Widgets and Noti!cations

iOS noti!cations have been improved in iOS 5 and iOS 6. The !fth version of theOperating System introduced the Noti!cation Center, which is available by a pullfrom the top of the screen gesture. The internal application manages:

• Messages from applications compatible with Noti!cation Center• Weather and Stocks widgets.

iOS 6 added the ability to tweet or post to Facebook from the Noti!cation Centerwithin a Share widget. In this section, we will see how to customize and greatlyenhance noti!cations.

5.2.1 Settings in Noti!cations

NCSettings is a free tweak, which adds many controls to the Noti!cation Center. Asshown (Figure 5.1, page 88), NCSettings has a very clean design and enables to ad-just: Wi-Fi, Volume, Brightness, Lock Rotation, Cellular Data, 3G, Vibration, SilentMode, Location Services, Auto-Lock, Flash light, Private Browsing, Bluetooth, Air-plane Mode, Power, VPN, Personal Hotspot, Auto-Correction and Do Not Disturb.

Figure 5.1: NCSettings enables to toggle controls directly from Noti!cation Center.

To install NCSettings:

1. Install the tweak from Cydia and respring.2. Turn the Noti!cation Center “On” in: Settings > Noti!cations > NCSet-

tings (Figure 5.2, page 89).3. Con!gure the tweak to your liking in Settings > NCSettings. You can select

which toggles to use, change theme, and several other settings (Figure ??,page ??).

SBSettings is an alternative tweak that also enables you to adjust your device set-tings directly from the noti!cation toggle panel. SBSettings is more powerful thanNCSettings, but does not look as nice.

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Figure 5.2: Enabling NCSettings noti!cations.

Figure 5.3: NCSettings con!guration.

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You can install SBSettings from Cydia and then turn On the noti!cations in theSettings app: Settings > Noti!cations > SBSettings.

The tweak comes with a pretty complex separate con!guration application. Launchthe SBSettings app to:

• Customize the dropdown window• Set “0n”/“O)” plenty of toggles: 3G, Bluetooth, AdBlocker, Location, etc.• Display of date and memory on the status bar• Choose among lots of themes available to customize your Noti!cation Center• Use third party widgets since many other packages (more than 90 at time ofwriting) rely on SBSettings.

Figure 5.4: SBSettings application: setting togglers (left), Noti!cation Center (right).

tip While you install more and more apps and tweaks, you will notice thatall apps and tweaks from Cydia that use the Settings app for their con-!guration group their items together, in what we can call the jailbreakgroup.

5.2.2 Widgets for Noti!cations

Cydia dedicates a whole section, “Addons (Noti!cation Center)”, to new widgets(more than 140 at time of writing) that can be installed in the Noti!cation Center.

Having widgets in the Noti!cation Center is nice. But what about Android mosttouted feature: Home screen widgets? Dashboard X is a $1.99 tweak that displaysNoti!cations Center widgets in your Home screen.

An expensive but very popular app is IntelliScreenX. For $9.99, IntelliScreenX adds areimplemented, full-featured Noti!cation Center to the lock screen. With IntelliS-creenX, you know what’s happening just by looking at your locked device and manyactions are available straight from your Lock screen.

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Figure 5.5: Settings for apps and tweaks from Cydia are grouped together, just afterthe Twitter and Facebook on iOS 6

Figure 5.6: Dashboard X adds Noti!cations Center widgets to your Home screen,IntelliScreenX adds them to a re-engineered Lock screen app (both screen shots bytheir authors).

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5.2.3 Add Widgets in Status Bar

We have now widgets in the Noti!cation Center, the Home screen and the Lockscreen. What about the Status Bar? Several tweaks add new features to the fewpixels that are almost always on the top of your screen.

WeatherBar is a tiny tweak that does not even have a single setting. It changes thebackground color of the status bar according to the outside temperature. The coloris a continuum between Purple (-4!F or -20!C), Blue (Figure 5.7, page 92), Green(32!F or 0!C) (Figure 5.7, page 92), Yellow, Orange and Red (122!F or 50!C). Aftera few days, it is very convenient to know the outside temperature just by taking aquick glance at your phone.

Figure 5.7: Status bar with WeatherBar tweak enabled: has a blue tint with coldertemperatures (left) and green with warmer temperatures (right).

5.3 Home Screen

The Home Screen application can be heavily customized. We already saw in theprevious section how to add widgets. But as you can guess, you can do much more.

For instance, Pages+ will cost you $1.99 to use custom backgrounds on each page,and transition between them with 3D e)ects that should make your friends jealous.

Let’s see now how we can:

• Customize the Dock,• Add shortcuts to launch apps faster,• Navigate easily between apps.

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5.3.1 More Icons in Dock

Choosing the four applications that we can launch from the dock for iPhone andiPod is always a dilemma: there are usually so many we want to access instantly. Atleast, iPad users get six! It is very convenient to add, at least, one new spot in thedock (Figure 5.8, page 93), by installing Five Icon Dock.

Figure 5.8: Displaying !ve icons in the Dock with Five Icon Dock.

Have you dreamed about having Mac OSX CoverFlow e)ect on your iPhone? Multi-ple tweaks bring this renowned e)ect, the most popular tweaks are:

• Cascade available from Cydia for $0.99. Cascade brings the CoverFlow e)ect toyour iPhone and iPad. It works awesome together with In!nidock tweak, thatallows to display more icons and make them scroll in your dock. In!nidock isavailable from Cydia for $1.99.

• Springtomize 2 available from Cydia for $2.99 and allows to customize yourSpringBoard. Springtomize 2 o)ers a multitude of tweaks that allow you tocustomize your dock, status bar, iOS folders behavior, add animations andmore. The Cover Flow e)ect o)ered by Springtomize 2 is slightly di)erentfrom Cascade one. Supports iOS 5 and 6.

Springtomize 2 does magics and allows to display 5 icons in row not only in thedock, but also on your Home screen (Figure 5.9, page 94)

5.3.2 More Space

To use our screen real estatewisely, you can also install a free DietBar, which createsslimmer slider bars in all apps.

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Figure 5.9: Cascade brings CoverFlow e)ect (left), Springtomize 2 allows to display!ve icons in row (right). Images from their respective authors.

Figure 5.10: DietBar allows to display more content in many apps, especially inlandscape mode.

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5.3.3 Rotation

IconRotator is a free tweak available from Cydia that detects device’s orientation androtates Home screen icons from portrait view to landscape view.

Figure 5.11: IconRotator rotates icons in horizontal view.

SBRotator 6 which, as its name suggests, is compatible with iOS 6, is a better paid($2.99) alternative to IconRotator on Cydia. SBRotator rotates the full SpringBoardon the iPhone and the iPod Touch with the same behavior as the iPad, instead ofrotating icons individually. The tweak is compatible with SBSettings. In addition toSpringBoard, SBRotator also supports Settings, YouTube and even the Phone app inlandscape mode. A total of eleven applications are supported.

And for $0.99 more, LSRotator by the same author will also rotate the Lock screen,but at the time of writing it is not compatible with iOS 6.

5.4 Multi-Tasking

Figure 5.12: Auxo.

We have just seen how to change settings quickly. Can we also switch apps, also

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known as multi-tasking, quickly? The answer is yes, thanks to several tweaks thatwill enhance the way you multi-task.

Auxo is regularly cited as a contender for the best tweak ever. To hold this impres-sive title, Auxo has the perfect story and a great implementation. Originally, Auxowas a design concept on the very popular The Verge forums. It was just a mockup,but pleased developers so much, that a team implemented it for real and put it onsale on Cydia for $1.99. The concept plays with three ideas:

1. The app switcher should display an actual visual representation of their re-spective app.

2. The music playback controls should display more information.3. The settings page should have more features.

All these features are implemented without altering the way the user uses the appswitcher:

1. Double press the Home button to activate the task switcher.2. Swipe right for Music controls.3. Swipe right again for Settings controls.

Figure 5.13: Auxo: Displaying player by swiping right (left), displaying settings byswiping right again (right).

Auxo can be highly customized from Settings > Auxo. We recommend using “5Toggles Per Row” and bringing the *ashlight toggle to the !rst screen if your devicehas the *ashlight capability. The tweak works particularly well with other tweaks,such as Activator and Zephyr, which we will cover in the next section. Auxo is notyet certi!ed for iPad, but this update was promised by its authors.

Let’s mention three alternatives to Auxo:

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Figure 5.14: Auxo: Closing an app by swiping down (left), long press to access thebutton that allows to remove all apps from the multitasking tray (right).

1. Multi!0w was known as the best task switching app until Auxo came out. For$4.99, Multi!0w enables to see big images of running apps, close them with aswipe, reorder them. Sadly, the tweak is not compatible with iOS 6.

2. Dash is a very close competitor to Multi!0w but uses a cover*ow e)ect forswitching running apps. The tweak costs $1.99.

3. Aero is another very customizable switcher that uses big application iconsdisplayed on the full screen to switch between apps. The $1.99 tweak, madeby the same developer as Dash, uses many 3D e)ects.

5.5 Shortcuts

Activator is a useful free tweak that enables to change the functions of any particularbutton and assign new actions to gestures. For instance, you can use Activator to:

• Assign actions to the Volume Up or Volume Down button.• Rede!ne the behavior or the double Home press.• Create new gestures like “Swipe From Screen Bottom Right”.

Once installed from Cydia, Activator can both be accessed from Settings > Activa-tor (by default) and by launching the Activator app itself.

In the Apple philosophy, everything is simple. Yet, opening the task switcher bya “double-click” is surprising and not handy for many users. Let’s use Activator tocreate a new swipe to launch Auxo, or the regular app switcher, that we describedin the previous section:

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Figure 5.15: Create a new gesture in three quick steps with Activator.

1. Open Activator.2. Press Anywhere tab which will enable the gesture both from SpringBoard

and from within an app.3. Scroll down to the “Slide In Gesture” section and tap on the From Screen

Bottom-Right.4. Scroll down to the “System Actions” section and tap on Activate Switcher.

tip You may know SnapChat, a hugely popular ephemeral photo chat ap-plication. One of the principles of SnapChat is that it prevents its userto keep pictures. Or rather, that it alerts the sender if you take a screenshot showing the picture, by calling the Screen shot function (pressingboth Home and Power shortly). You can easily use Activator to assignthe screen shot action to another button, which SnapChat can’t moni-tor.

Zephyr is a $4.99 tweak that brings the swipe gestures from the iPad to the otheriOS devices.

Needless to say, if your Home button is malfunctioning, you need Activator orZephyr instead of throwing your device to the garbage bin.

Deck and its iPad version Deck HD are $1.99 launcher apps.

5.6 Voice and Text Input

The most frequently used input device is of course the keyboard, a virtual one foriOS devices. If one element has almost never changed, it’s the keyboard while thecompetition raves with innovations. Not to mention that the famous voice controlinterface Siri is only available for the latest iOS devices.

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5.6.1 Lowercase Keyboard

Figure 5.16: Display lower or uppercase in your keyboard

Apple has chosen to display only uppercase letters on the keyboard no matter whatyou are typing. ShowCase is a great free tweak which !xes that by displaying lower-case letters when needed, as shown (Figure 5.16, page 99). This tweak is compatiblewith the next one, SwipeSelection, but sadly, it does not work with another keyboardtweak named Octopus Keyboard which we introduce in Section 5.6.4 (page 100).

5.6.2 Swiping Text Cursors

SwipeSelection is a very useful tweak that enables to move the text cursor by swipingthe keyboard area left or right. If you install it, chances are you will love it.

By holding the shift key on the (virtual) keyboard while swiping, you will select text.No more struggle selecting text and moving through text on iOS.

5.6.3 Perfect Auto-Correction

Who was never annoyed by the default iOS auto-correction mechanism? Most usershave already deactivated the option in: Settings > General > Keyboard > Auto-Correction.

There is even a website dedicated to the funniest mistakes Auto Correct does.

After jailbreak, you can re-enable the option while installing ManualCorrect whichstill displays auto-correct suggestions, but requires you to tap them before replacingany text. By default, what you type is what you get, giving you much less frustra-tion.

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5.6.4 Predictive Input

Octopus Keyboard is a great addition that adds predictive input to the default iOSkeyboard. As you type, it o)ers some possible completions as shown (Figure 5.17,page 100).

Figure 5.17: Octopus Keyboard displays some word completions as you type. Swipeup from the key to accept one.

The $4.99 package is installed from Cydia, but the payment is done directly throughPayPal. As with Cydia, you can install your license on multiple devices that youown. You will be identi!ed by your nickname, or the email address associated withyour PayPal account. And unlike some other apps, which do not use Cydia, gettingOctopus Keyboard to run on your device is quite easy:

1. Install Octopus Keyboard from Cydia.2. Go to Settings > Octopus Keyboard.3. Tap on Buy the License.4. The PayPal web-based payment page appears in Safari (Your cookies should

be set to “Always” in the Settings > Safari > Cookies).5. Purchase the license on PayPal.6. Go back to Settings > Octopus Keyboard.7. License Status should display “Valid”. If not, click on “Download License”.8. You can install an additional dictionary from Settings > Octopus Keyboard

> Installed Dictionaries.

Once installed, Octopus Keyboardwill display several completion suggestions as youtype. To accept any of them, just swipe up. The keyboard automatically inserts aspace after each word, but when you insert punctuation, such as a dot, it automati-cally removes the space before, and adds one after: Awesome!

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Figure 5.18: Open the link to buy Octopus Keyboard from Settings, pay using PayPaland go back to Settings.

Life decisions are tough: You won’t be able to use both Octopus Keyboard and Show-Case, but the developer of Octopus is aware of the problem and working on a !x.Compatibility with SwipeSelection is done in the pre-release version available froma separate Cydia repository set by the developer.

5.6.5 Voice Control

Voice control is the feature Apple put forward for the iPhone 4S release. Whendriving, walking, eating, talking to your device is a dream come true.

If you are already using Siri, you can extend its features thanks to AssistantLove. The$1.99 tweak integrates Siri with Spotify, GPS Apps (TomTom, Waze, MotionX-GPSand Navigon) and enables to launch apps just with part of their name. For instance,you can ask Siri to open “Battle!eld” instead of “Battle!eld 3”. AssistantLove alsoenables to de!ne your own shortcuts, toggle Settings such as WiFi or Flashlight.The application is actively developed, and is a must-have if you are a Siri user.

Not everyone uses Siri. For marketing reasons, Apple released Siri alongside thenew iPhone 4S and restricted its use to the brand new device. Dozens of millions ofiPhone 4 users were really sad to be left over the voice control feature.

There is a tweak that enables to use Siri for the iPhone 4 and even the 3GS. However,the tweak named SiriPort is not available from the regular Cydia sources but froman unknown source. As the tweak naturally exchanges lots of data with servers (Siriis server-based), it is hard to tell whether the app is fully safe. Try it at your ownrisk! SiriPort’s install instructions are available in Russian only, but Google Translateis here to help from http://siriport.ru

There is a better alternative which is more secure. Instead of Apple’s Siri, we can

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use Google Now. Google Now is a great alternative to Siri: Its voice recognition isbetter and faster.

Figure 5.19: Use Google Now to ask questions and get answers using NowNow.

The free NowNow tweak enables to use Google Now on your iOS device, and isavailable from the standard sources. Make sure the o+cial Google Search app fromthe App Store is also installed on your system, as NowNow relies on its libraries.

1. Install NowNow from Cydia.2. Set your activation method in Settings > NowNow. If you don’t have Siri

on your device, you can choose the regular Siri activation method, which isholding the Home button.

3. Try it. For some questions, the Google service will answer by voice. For manyothers, it will return the search results on Google.

5.7 Create Your Own Tweak

Flex can be called the Tweak of Tweaks. This $3.99 app is a must-have as it:

• Enables to create your own tweak without coding,• Puts together hundreds of tweaks uploaded by other users for almost anyapplication.

Tweaks enabled by Flex can change any parameter (even internal) in any app. Basedon Mobile Substrate such changes are named patches. They can:

• Remove ads from a given app.

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Figure 5.20: Flex allows to run Pages in full screen mode.

• Display an app in full screen mode, without Status Bar. Full screen mode isvery useful for apps that often display the keyboard, such as Apple’s Pages.Full screen patch almost transforms an iPhone 4 into an iPhone 5.

• Disable app features, such as the “Store” button in Apple’s Music App.• Cheat in games, by increasing the score or the virtual money.• And much, much more.

Figure 5.21: The two main views of Flex: The list of patches (left) and the cloudcatalog (right).

Install Flex from Cydia and launch it. Flex user interface has three sections:

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1. Patches, which is the list of patches you have installed on your device.2. Cloud, which is where you can download hundreds of patches.3. About which is a succinct documentation of Flex.

5.7.1 Flex Cloud

Let’s start by looking at the impressive list of existing tweaks on what is called FlexCloud. When opening the Cloud tab, you see a list of the applications (both fromthe o+cial App Store and Cydia) for which patches are available.

For instance, scroll to SpringBoard to see the list of patches for SpringBoard. Manypatches here could be available as separate tweaks on Cydia, but it is much moreconvenient to have them all in one place. Let’s install “Hide Carrier” which removesthe useless carrier information in the Status Bar:

Figure 5.22: Three steps of installing a patch: From left to right, select the patchfrom application, click on Download and go back to the Patches view and select thenew patch.

Flex is a great way to install and manage many tweaks. Installing a tweak is muchfaster than installing a Cydia package, and most often using Flex tweaks does notrequire SpringBoard restart.

To delete a Patch, swipe right or left on it, and then click on the Delete button thatappears.

5.7.2 Create Your Tweak

Although Flex would already be very useful with the features we saw until now, itsreal power comes from the ability to create patches within the app. Indeed, all thePatches in the Cloud section are created by Flex users who uploaded them.

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Creating a new tweak requires almost no programming skills but a bit of patience.Let’s explain how it works. All the apps in iOS use a runtime written in Objective-C, an object-oriented programming language. Like in real-life, objects representelements. Objects can have properties (a car object could have the ‘color’ propertywith the value ‘red’) and can perform some actions. The actions that you can per-form on objects are named methods. Of course, the app packages don’t have theiroriginal source code with them. Turns out however, that all the names of objectsand methods are still written in clear-text in the iOS apps.

Flex enables to change the return value of any object method. Any of thesechanges is called a unit.

Figure 5.23: Editing a patch on Flex.

Let’s !rst look at how works the “Hide Carrier”, the SpringBoard patch that wepreviously installed:

1. Open Flex and go to the Patches section.2. Tap on Hide Carrier.3. There are several infos displayed including a description provided by the au-

thor of the patch, the author name, and the Units section. In our case, there isonly one unit. Click on Unit for _updateServiceItem.

4. In the unit settings we can see that the unit changes the value of method “up-dateServiceItem" from the object class "SBStatusBarDataManager" to "NONE".The class "SBStatusBarDataManager" is where all modi!cations to the Spring-Board Status Bar content happens. The method "updateServiceItem” is the onethat returns the carrier name. The only override value allowed for this kindof data is “NONE” which means nothing.

Flex can override the value of three kinds of methods:

• Boolean value can be set to true or false

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• Integer values can be set to any number• Other methods can be set to NONE instead of their real results.

The latter is the unit applied by “Hide Carrier”. For instance, Flex, as of now, doesnot allow to create a patch that sets a custom carrier name instead of removing it.However, the ease of creating the tweak is unparalleled: Compare to writing morethan a hundred lines of code for about the same tweak.

Finding the right object class and the right method to override can be a long process.Either by previous knowledge from some existing tweaks, or by guessing from thename, you can try repeatedly to change values and test the app until you get thepatch you wanted. Looking at some patches, you can see that they may overridedozens of methods to get the perfect patch. Finding the right combinations of unitsis like a game!

In this chapter, we learned about great tweaks available for jailbroken devices. It istime now to discover the apps you missed.

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