iOS 8 has been technically jailbroken since October 22, but it’s taken weeks to get it polished enough for Cydia, the jailbreak alternative to the App Store.
Now that things are “stable enough,” Cydia creator Jay Freeman has flipped the switch to start allowing the sale of iOS 8 tweaks and themes.
A neat trick that allows old console emulators and other unapproved apps to be installed on iOS devices without jailbreaking is set to be wiped out with iOS 8.1. Apple has finally taken action against the “date trick” many users have long been taking advantage of, and it’s going to make playing your favorite SNES and Game Boy games much harder.
As thousands of protesters flood the streets of Hong Kong demanding a democratic election, the Chinese government is reportedly using sophisticated malware to spy on not only Android devices, but iOS devices as well.
But don’t worry about China peeking at your Snapchats. There has yet to be a widespread instance of iOS malware in the wild, and this particularly “advanced” trojan still requires a tremendous amount of complicit behavior on the victim’s part.
Popcorn Time, the service that allows users to stream movie torrents, today makes its debut on iOS. It’s available only to jailbroken devices — there’s no way Apple would have approved it for the App Store — and it can be obtained through Cydia via a dedicated Popcorn Time repository.
Jailbreaking has been around almost as long as iOS itself, giving users more control over their iPhones and letting them customize almost everything.
In today’s video, we take a look at how to jailbreak iOS 7.1 using the Pangu jailbreaking tool. If you’re not running that particular version of Apple’s mobile operating system, don’t worry: The process is very similar for every release. Take a look at the video to learn how to do it for yourself – it only takes a few minutes!
If you’ve never really understood why Apple decided to make the iPhone’s signal bars circular in iOS 7 (I haven’t, either), then you’ll be pleased to know that you’ll soon have the ability to change it, thanks to an upcoming tweak for jailbroken iPhones called Meter.
Ever since the first iPhone was jailbroken, hacker and developer Jay Freeman, aka Saurik, has maintained the Cydia Store as a way for jailbreakers to download, buy and sell their tweaks.
Run consistently since February 2008, there have been more than a few challengers over the years — Cydia alternatives developed by third parties who promise to “better monetize” the jailbreak community — but Cydia continues to be the de facto repository for jailbreak tweaks.
But Freeman says we can’t take Cydia for granted. In fact, he’s thought about picking up his toys and going home.
Jailbreaking your iPhone is of questionable wisdom these days, but this new tweak is pretty cool.
Called Convergance, it promises users a complete, all-in-one Lock screen replacement package for iOS. The package’s features extend across four main areas: widgets, theming, HTML, and APIs for developers.
If you’re the owner of a jailbroken iOS device, a new tweak can give you a wealth of better power down options… and even graft iOS 7.1’s new power down slider onto stock iOS 7, or give you back iOS 6’s power-off slider. Keen!
Barrel-inspired jailbreak tweak Cylinder has been updated and listed on Cydia’s BigBoss repo.
The tweak allows users to add animations to their iPhone Home screen. These animations can be created via special Lua scripts — a lightweight, but powerful scripting language — and then layered on top of one another to create customized effects.
One of iOS 7.1’s major changes was a new Calendar app that added such features as the ability to see a full list of events while in your Calendar’s month view, as well as a more complete list of nation-specific holiday.
If you use your iPhone as an organizer, the new Calendar app is enough to update to iOS 7.1 on its own right. Unfortunately, iOS 7.1 also broke the popular evasi0n jailbreak, meaning that to get the new Calendar, you had to abandon your jailbroken device.
No longer. If you have a jailbroken iOS device, you can now download a new app that patches the iOS 7.1 calendar into iOS versions 7.0 and 7.0.6. Called Gregorian, it can be downloaded through Cydia from the https://rpetri.ch/repo/ repository.
A new Cydia tweak lets Snapchat users easily log their conversations in a way that subverts the original concept behind the private one-time message sending tool.
Integrating with the existing Snapchat app, the tweak adds an additional option under the “Open Settings” button on the official app. To access past conversations, users can hit the the settings icon to access the popup menu, then tap on the “Open Snapchat Log” option to view the log.
Fancy a blue virtual keyboard for your iOS 7 device? If so, the appropriately named Cydia tweak BlueBoard may just be the tweak for you.
Once installed, users need to launch the Settings app and respring the device to get the tweak up and running. The tweak affects both keyboards within iOS 7, so that when enabled both the standard light keyboard or dark keyboard come with blue keys.
I’ve had iPhones for years, but I’ve never really been keen on using one that wasn’t jailbroken. As much as I love iOS, some of Apple’s decisions always kept my iPhone from working exactly how I wanted it to.
Jailbreaking gave me the ability to sidestep those limitations and make iOS my own. I could experience some of the freedom that Android users have grown to love while retaining the reliability, stability and polish of iOS. While I was frustrated that Apple wasn’t making major changes to improve its platform, I was happy that I could make them myself using unauthorized third-party tweaks.
Then I started using iOS 7, and everything changed.
A large number of users have reported issues with a problematic status bar in iOS immediately following a jailbreak.
While it’s hardly the biggest issue for a liberated iOS device to encounter, having the carrier name, signal status and remaining battery turn from white to black — or sometimes not vanish when it’s supposed to — while using certain apps can be both annoying and overall detrimental to user experience. Thanks to a straightforward resolution , however, that issue can now be sorted out in the form of a Cydia package installation by following these steps:
One of the things I like most about iOS 7 is the two different colors of keyboards, but unfortunately, they only come in monochrome: black or white.
Enter Fancy. A new jailbreak tweak, Fancy allows you to color iOS 7’s UI any pigment you want, from having a sea green Notification Center to a blood red soft keyboard, and much, mucj more.
Fancy is compatible with the iPhone 5, 5c, and 5S, iPod Touch (5th Gen), iPad (4th Gen) & iPad mini. It’s available from the ModMyi Cydia Repository for $0.99.
If you want iOS 7 to drink some of the electric kool-aid, this is the tweak for you.
The Evasi0n jailbreak may have opened up iOS 7 devices to Cydia tweaks, but due to the fact that Apple’s new A7 chip is 64-bit, many of the most popular tweaks have needed to be upgraded to support devices like the iPhone 5s, iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina Display.
One of the more popular reasons to jailbreak your device is Winterboard, a jailbreak tweak that makes you change the way iOS looks. For example, you can use Winterboard to make iOS look and feel like Windows Phone, Android, or even your Mac. But because of the aforementioned lack of 64-bit support, Winterboard didn’t work on the newest (jailbroken) iOS devices.
According to Cydia gatekeeper Jay Freeman, otherwise known as Saurik, the newest version of Winterboard is compatabile with 64-bit ARM processors, and should allow you to reskin any device with an A7 chip. You can download the update on Cydia.
One of the most popular reasons to jailbreak an iPhone is BiteSMS, a jailbreak tweak that supper charges text messaging with better messaging alerts, quick reply and more. Unfortunately, ever since the iOS 7 jailbreak came along BiteSMS has been MIA, but that’s all changed with the release of BiteSMS for iOS 7, which not only updates the popular messaging app to be compatible with Apple’s latest mobile OS but also adds support for modern devices with 64-bit A7 processors.
As a designer, you can never have enough icons. Period.
The iOS 7 App Developer Icon Pack is a collection of vector icons and symbols optimized for iOS 7 app development. Engineered for the tab bar and toolbar in iPhone and iPad, they’re always pixel perfect and ready for Retina displays. During this limited time offer, Cult of Mac Deals has it for 48% off the regular price…only $39.
The iOS 7 jailbreak was released last Sunday, but it was a messy release that had a lot of bugs and compatibility issues. We warned everyone to wait at the time. Today the last major issue with the jailbreak was fixed for newer iOS devices with the A7 chip.
Jay ‘saurik’ Freeman, the creator of Cydia, has updated Mobile Substrate for iOS 7 and the new 64-bit architecture found in the iPhone 5s, iPad Air, and second-gen iPad mini.
Apple’s iMessage service is pretty terrific, but it has one big limitation, and that is that it’s only available on Macs and iOS devices. At least officially. But there is an unofficial app that brings iMessage to your Android-powered smartphone. It works just as advertised, but we strongly advise you not to use it.
In the final months leading up to the next major iOS release, there’s barely enough activity on the jailbreak front to fill a couple of conference rooms. But with the public release of iOS 7 just around the corner, it’s like the calm before the storm as hackers gear up for what may be the toughest system to crack yet.
Developers, hackers, and hardcore fans gathered in late August at JailbreakCon in New York City, an annual summit for the meeting of the minds within the jailbreak community. And while the conference’s founder, Craig Fox, wasn’t “overly pleased” with attendance for the third edition, he still considers the event a success. Why? It fulfilled its mission.
For the past few years, JailbreakCon has played a crucial role in providing face time to code jockeys from different continents who would otherwise only know each other by Twitter handles. Friendships are formed and ideas are shared. This year was no different. And as the release of iOS 7 draws near, jailbreaking’s closely-knit group of hackers and developers is getting back in the game.
As the public release of iOS 7 looms, momentum behind the world of jailbreaking has stalled. There hasn’t been a big jailbreak release in months and there likely won’t be one for many months to come.
But a mid-year funk hasn’t stopped talented hackers and developers from gathering yet again at JailbreakCon, the world’s only convention dedicated solely to the jailbreaking community.
I love Google Chrome—it’s my browser of choice on Android, Mac, and iOS. But navigating your bookmarks within the mobile apps is nowhere near as easy as it should be. Fortunately, there’s an awesome little tweak for jailbroken iOS devices that solves that.
It’s called BMarks Bar, and it introduces a handy bookmarks bar that offers one-tap access to your favorite sites.
There’s nothing wrong with the default unlock animation on iOS, but having lived with it for six years, it’s nice to have a change. With LiveWire Pro, a new tweak for jailbroken iPhones, you can choose from seven different unlock animations and quickly switch to another when you fancy a change.