iOS Articles Subscribe to this category

All iOS articles can be found here. If you can’t find a topic in here, use the Search box!

Create & Send Doodles From The iPhone Messages App

by on
Leave a comment
Doodle-Message-iOS-Draw.jpg
The great thing about Cydia tweaks is that they make stock apps perform tasks that can usually be done only via third-party apps. A few days ago, we covered MessageMe - an iOS messenger with a pretty decent feature list. Among other great things, MessageMe can also let you draw freehand and share your drawings with your contacts. Doodle Message is a new tweak that adds a similar feature to the stock Messages app! Now you can create colorful drawings without moving away from the SMS app, and send them to your friends all in one go. The tweak even lets you choose between several brush sizes, and makes it possible to use a photo as the background for your doodles. Read More

Apple’s Podcasts iOS App Gets Playlists, Custom Stations & More

by on
Leave a comment
Podcasts-iOS-Stations.jpg
The standalone Podcasts app by Apple that was released last year has received its first major update. Previously, it just got a few minor updates to fix crashing issues, but the change log this time is a bit more substantial. Has it ever bothered you that while it is possible to easily organize songs into different playlists, the same can’t be done for podcasts? For instance I like catching up with football news while coming to work in the morning, while my evening listening sessions are all about informative shows. So, instead of manually selecting each episode, now I can take advantage of the new ‘My Stations’ feature to group particular podcasts together. The update has also added support for temporary stations, which can help people who don’t want to disrupt their playlist for a single episode. The overall look and feel of the app has been enhanced as well, and so has the iCloud syncing features. Read More

Make iPhone Alarms Read Aloud Weather, Battery, Time & Other Info

by on
2
Wake-Info-Settings.jpg
When it comes to third-party alarm apps for smartphones, there are some that won’t let you snooze the alarm until you thoroughly shake your device, or perform some complex logical tasks, but you won’t find many ways of adding similar capabilities to the stock Clock app in iOS. Unless you have a jailbroken device, of course. Wake Info is a new Cydia tweak that takes a gentle, yet effective approach towards making sure you don’t keep snoozing your alarm, and start your day with the right kind of motivation. The tweak endows the stock alarm app with the ability to read aloud any information you want to hear in the morning. The information can be anything from the battery level of your phone to the unread email messages waiting in your inbox. Read More

Add A Stopwatch To The iPhone Lock Screen With Stoppur

by on
Leave a comment
Stoppur-iOS.jpg
Whenever you have to use the stopwatch available in your iPhone, there is a possibility that you will forget all about it once it goes to the background and you start using another app. This is because for some inexplicable reason, iOS does not show any notifications or even an icon badge when the stopwatch is in operation. Stoppur solves this problem quite efficiently. Recently released in the Cydia store, this tweak does something even more useful than adding a badge to the Clock app; it adds the entire stopwatch display to your device’s lock screen. Of course there is no way of controlling the timer without launching the Clock app, but having the continuously updating time display right on your lock screen can certainly come in handy in a lot of situations. Read More

Official Reuters News App For iPhone & iPad Impresses With A Great UI

by on
2
Reuters-for-iPhone-iPad
Reuters has been among the world's leading news agencies for quite a long time. It is not just an important name for the business and media sector, but is often the first to break many important news stories as well. Having said that, it is impossible for users to always be in front of their TV screens or on a news service’s website to catch the latest happenings from around the world. That is where news apps become really important. Reuters has had a presence on iOS for quite a while, and the organization has just launched a new official app for iPhone and iPad. The app has a beautiful interface that you can navigate using easy gestures. Besides keeping you up-to-date with the latest news from around the world, he app also lets you create a custom watchlist for the stock market. Read More

Get Album Art & Gesture Controls In The iPhone Volume HUD

by on
Leave a comment
Music-HUD.jpg
The translucent box that shows up on your iPhone’s screen every time you change its volume might not be the most important feature of iOS, but the Cydia store already has a few tweaks that focus on this HUD to enhance it. Some tweaks let you add more information to the volume display but if you don’t want to alter it too drastically, there are options like Hud that add album art to the box whenever you are listening to music. Music HUD is a new Cydia release that can be deemed a combination of the two aforementioned tweaks. It doesn’t focus on a single particular feature, though everything it offers is related to music. Thanks to Music HUD, it is possible to control song playback by performing gestures on the HUD, add album art to it and tweak the music info that is displayed. Read More

The Best Video Players For iPhone, iPad & iPod touch

by on
14
Best-Video-Players-For-iOS
There can be no denying the fact that thanks to their high resolution Retina screens, Apple devices can hold their own against any smartphone in terms of display. The screen resolutions and other display aspects just keep getting better and better with each new iDevice release, but what’s the use of having such extraordinary hardware if you can’t play even the most popular video formats on your iPhone? While this could have been a real problem if users had to rely solely on the stock Videos app, thankfully there are a lot of quality video players available on App Store as well as Cydia. Many iOS users might not even be aware that their iPhone can play just about any video file, thanks to some awesomely feature-rich apps. It’s all about finding the right app for your device, and that’s what we are going to help you with. In what follows, we will take a look at some of the best video players available for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Read More

Cross Greeting Cards With Time Capsules & You Get Keepster For iOS

by on
2
Keepster-for-iPhone
It is an emotional moment for most people if they lose their text messages, but times are changing and a lot of our important conversations now reside on the cloud, thanks to services like iMessage, Facebook, Skype and the like. However, if you are the kind of person who likes to keep or share mementos and souvenirs from the past, a simple Facebook message might appear to be a bit too casual for the purpose. Keepster is an iPhone app that makes sure you express the right message at just the right time or situation. The app connects with your Facebook account to let you send visually rich greeting greeting cards, time capsules or location-triggered messages to your friends. You can also use Keepster to send a message (or photo) to your future self. Read More

Webnote Is An iPad Web Browser With Gesture-Based Text & Media Sharing

by on
Leave a comment
Webnote-web-browser-for-iPad
Services like Pocket and Instapaper have already popularized the concept of bookmarking material on the go in order to read the content later when offline. You can even integrate these services with your iPhone’s web browser if you have a jailbroken device. Webnote, however, is more than just a way of highlighting and bookmarking content for offline reading. This iPad browser lets you use gestures to easily save videos, photos or text to your device, while also providing you with an easy way to share this content with your Facebook and Twitter friends. Webnote is among the most social web browsers we have seen in a long time, and it even lets you follow other users and see the content they have bookmarked. Read More

Quickly Record A Voice Memo In iOS Using An Activator Gesture

by on
Leave a comment
Voice-Memo-Toggle-Record.jpg
Not many people use audio recording as regularly as they shoot videos on their iPhone. There are some situations, however, where capturing just the sound is enough, and you don’t have to waste your device’s battery as well as storage space on a video clip. Audio recording is also great for taking notes during a lecture or interview. iOS comes with a stock audio recorder of its own, by the name of Voice Memos. It might not be the most frequently used app on your iPhone, but it can come in handy every once in a while. A lot of people (including yours truly) are too lazy to go through the hassle of unlocking their device, launching Voice Memos and then pressing the record button. The steps might not sound too tedious but in a pressure situation, every second might be precious. This is why Ryan Petrich’s new Voice Memo Toggle for Activator might be a good add-on to keep in your iDevice. Thanks to the tweak, you can begin a recording session from any area of iOS merely by performing an Activator gesture; there is no need to even look at the screen! Read More

PSSP Is A Full-Featured PSP Emulator For iPhone

by on
Leave a comment
PSSP-PSP-iOS-emulator
Some people argue that handheld gaming devices don’t have much of a future due to the constant progress smartphones are making. There can be no denying the fact that modern smartphones offer a huge variety of titles, but those who prefer quality over quantity still go for the likes of PlayStation Portable or Nintendo 3DS. A lot of people are sure to appreciate a way of combining the positive points of smartphones and handheld gaming devices. PPSSPP doesn’t exactly do that, but it comes pretty close. This PSP emulator has been around on Android and Windows for quite a while now, but has just arrived on iOS. As you can imagine, the app is available as a Cydia download, since Apple isn't likely to allow such a thing to appear in the App Store. PPSSPP can be deemed a work in progress, but some PSP games that are fully compatible with it look pretty awesome on the iPhone. Read More

Completely Control Pandora Playback From iPhone Lock Screen With ThumbsUp

by on
Leave a comment
ThumbsUp iOS Pandora
Pandora users, rejoice! What the famous service hasn't been able to do for its iPhone app has been accomplished by a third-party developer and released at the Cydia store. Pandora for iOS has always - rather annoyingly - lacked lock screen controls. You can keep listening to music from Pandora while using other apps or even when on the lock screen, but you have to launch Pandora itself every time you need to skip a track, add it to your bookmarks or give it a thumbs up. A lot of people have been demanding support for lock screen controls and now you can have them, thanks to a Cydia tweak by the name of ThumbsUp. The tweak lets you take full control of Pandora playback without ever having to open the app again and again. The buttons added to the lock screen are pretty neat, and look like they have been added to your iPhone by the Pandora client itself. Read More

Create Notes, Reminders & Calendar Events From iOS NC & Lock Screen With Tap To Widgets

by on
Leave a comment
Tap-to-Widgets-iOS-NC.jpg
Notification Center widgets have been around on iDevices since iOS 5, and the next likely step would perhaps be the arrival of lock screen and SpringBoard widgets in iOS 7. Though as with many other features officially incorporated in iOS updates, Cydia users have had these for a long time now. Tweaks like AnyLock and Dashboard X let users place useful and cosmetic widgets in areas of iOS that are even more easily accessible than the NC. The tweaks themselves are great, but the problem has always been the availability of good widgets on these platforms. The ‘Tap to’ series of widgets has been around for some time now, letting users perform different functions within the Notification Center, and their developer has now decided to polish things a little more by combining five widgets into one package. Tap to Widgets lets you manages all of the offered widgets from one place, and lets you use them with Dashboard X as well. Read More

Import Social Media Photos To Cloud Services & Access From Anywhere With Trovebox

by on
Leave a comment
Trovebox-for-web-Android-iOS
Smartphones these days are packed with super-fast processing power and a camera that easily matches performance of a mid-end digital snapper. This means people like spending more time taking photos with their phones now, than making phone calls. Since taking photos and sharing them over the internet has become quite an everyday chore, image sharing services like Instagram, Imgur and Facebook have taken the gauntlet for the task to provide us with platforms to share all our digital images on. Though if you use such many of these services, you might be looking for a way to bring all your photos uploaded to these sites together in a single place. Trovebox provides you a helping hand with exactly this. It’s a web app that lets you import photos to its cloud server and share them among your loved ones, all from one place. Read More

Get ‘Remind Me Later’ Options For iOS Mail, Messages, Alerts & Safari

by on
Leave a comment
AnyReminder-Cydia-tweak-iPhone-remind-me-later
The Remind Me Later options offered by iOS 6 brings a lot of convenience to the life of many. As always, Apple has done pretty well with the feature in terms of innovation, but the implementation can be deemed a little limited. Some might argue that restricting such a great feature to just calls is a big waste and if you agree, AnyReminder is the perfect tweak for you. This new Cydia release brings the Remind Me Later option to Safari, emails, text messages and notifications from all apps. Anyone who is always a little too lazy to create a new reminder can now do so right from within an app or important notification. The tweak can also help you with clearing the entire list of pending notifications from your lock screen. Read More

Set iOS Spotlight Or Any Home Screen As Default SpringBoard Page

by on
Leave a comment
DefaultSBPage iOS
Tweaks like DefaultSBPage make one wonder why such a brilliantly simple concept has never been implemented by anyone before. At one time or another, many iOS users must have idly wondered why repeatedly hitting the Home button makes the Home screen alternate between Spotlight and your SpringBoard’s first page. To be honest, there isn't much logic to it. Similarly, if you exit an app, the Springboard page from which the app was launched shows up. What if you want to always see a particular SpringBoard page or Spotlight search area whenever you come to the SpringBoard? This is exactly what DefaultSBPage lets you do. This new Cydia tweak lets users choose the default page of their Home screen. This might not sound too useful at first, but anyone who uses HomeSpringPage or SpringBoard widgets with tweaks like Dashboard X is sure to appreciate DefaultSBPage. Read More

Enable ‘Do Not Disturb’ On iPhone Using Siri Or A Lock Screen Toggle

by on
Leave a comment
Crescent-and-Flutterless-Cydia-iOS
Judging by the popularity of SBSettings, iOS users really like shortcuts for important system toggles. The dropdown window can be configured to show controls for Airplane mode, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 3G and various other functions. One thing glaring omission from the support list however, is Do Not Disturb. The feature is fairly new to iOS, and maybe that’s why there haven't been a lot of shortcut options available for it until now. Thankfully, the Cydia community has finally started recognizing the true potential of this little gem, and there are now a few decent options to control Do Not Disturb without having to launch the Settings app. Two of the best tweaks for this purpose are Flusterless and Crescent. While Flusterless adds a very neat and unobtrusive toggle to the lock screen, the newly released Crescent hands the control of Do Not Disturb to Siri. Read More

Quickly Queue Songs In The iOS Music App With Cyueue By Saurik

by on
Leave a comment
Cyueue-Cydia-Saurik
iOS’ Music player has remained pretty much dormant since its initial release on the original iPhone back in 2007. It can be argued that it is this way because Apple did everything right the first time, but that’s just not true when you compare the stock Music app with music players available on other platforms. One of the many features lacking in iOS’ Music app is the ability to dynamically queue songs without going through the process of creating a playlist. Cydia’s developer Jay Freeman AKA Saurik has developed a new tweak that solves just this problem. Check it out after the jump.

Read More

Yahoo! Face Stealer For iPhone Swaps Faces Within Photos & Videos In Real Time

by on
Leave a comment
Face-Stealer-iOS-Camera.jpg
We have covered a couple of hilarious face-swapping apps for Windows Phone (Funny Faces and Face Swap), and there are plenty of similar apps for iPhone as well, but the new Face Stealer for iOS by Yahoo! Japan completely kills the competition. Face Stealer comes with a few predefined masks, much like most apps of this genre, but you can also create masks of your own choice - something that is not possible in the other apps that we've seen so far. Another great thing about Face Stealer is its ability to place masks over faces in real-time. Within the app’s viewfinder, you can change masks on the go, adjust their level of intensity, and then share your funny pictures over social media or via email. Oh, and did we mention that Face Stealer works with videos as well? Read More

Supercharge The iOS 6 Stock Email Client With Mail Enhancer Pro

by on
Leave a comment
Mail-Enhancer-Pro.jpg
It has been a little more than a month since the iOS 6 untethered jailbreak was released, but the compatibility list of Cydia tweak has already become pretty impressive. Almost all big-name tweaks have been updated with iOS 6 support in the past month, with Mail Enhancer Pro becoming the latest to hop onto the iOS 6 bandwagon. A lot of third-party mail apps have been gaining popularity on iOS recently, but tweaks like Mail Enhancer can help keep you sticking to the stock Mail app. With the tweak’s latest update, it has gained a few new options as well, which takes its already impressive feature list to a whole new level. There are now advanced notification management options to complement existing functionality like account highlighting, HTML signatures and defining detailed rules for different scenarios. Read More