Tag Archives: ipod touch

Change Video Playback Speed In Any iPhone Media App With FastForward

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At first glance, the playback speed control in the Podcasts app for iOS might appear to many as nothing more than a novelty that doesn't have any productive purpose, but there are many users who like speeding things up a bit to get the most out of informative podcasts in the shortest possible time. Of course, doing the same to a song might ruin it completely, but if a person is merely speaking, you can often afford to tinker with playback speed. Just like podcasts, there is some video content that might benefit users more if they can speed it up a little. Imagine you are looking at a recording of a presentation from work, or a lengthy lecture; increasing playback speed is likely to aid you to a large extent. By default, there is no way of changing the video playback speed in iOS, and all you can do is import the video to a third-party app that sports this feature. With FastForward though, it becomes possible to control the playback rate of videos shows in any app on your iPhone! Read More

Stezza Is A Metro-Inspired iPhone Music Player Ideal For Road Trips

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The Modern UI offered by Windows Phone and Windows 8 is not just aesthetically unique; it also makes it really easy for users to navigate between different apps. After all, it is always more convenient to tap or click a tile, rather than a small icon. You might not be in favor of having Modern UI for the entire OS but in some apps, it can undoubtedly be of use. One can certainly make a strong case for feature-rich music apps, but when you are driving or just aren't in the mood for navigating through a myriad of options to start listening to a song, a music player with a Windows Phone-like interface might be just what you need. Stezza is a music app for iPhone and iPod touch devices aimed at providing users the best way of enjoying their song collection, especially while they are driving or are busy elsewhere. Read More

Backup App Data, Rename Icons & Clear Badges From iPhone Home Screen

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Most of the times, we try to cover Cydia tweaks that offer a completely novel feature, but almost everything the new Icon Tool tweak is designed to perform can be done via other tweaks. There are plenty of ways of removing icon badges from iOS apps, backing up app data using various tools and clearing an app’s cache. With Icon Tool though, you get all these options in one tweak, and the best part is that you don’t have to navigate through complicated menus to perform these tasks either, as Icon Tool adds an easily accessible context menu of sorts to all icons present on your iPhone’s SpringBoard. Read More

Select Songs To Play Right From The iPhone Lock Screen With Pluck

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Remember Tempus, the Cydia tweak that turns the iOS lock screen into a fully featured music player? Tweaks of this kind might appeal to some users, but others might label them pointless since you are losing the basic purpose of lock screen by adding too many controls to it. On the other hand, you have options like LSMusicGestures, which doesn’t add any visible buttons the lock screen, but lets you control playback using gestures. Pluck is a new tweak that is even simpler than LSMusicGestures, and it addresses an issue that we are sure most iOS users have faced at one time or another. Pluck adds a small button to the lock screen playback controls that can be used to access the songs and playlists present in the device’s music library. This means you can start listening to the song of your choice without even unlocking the screen. Read More

LightMail Is An Elegant iPhone Mail App That Displays All Attachments In One Place

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Apps like Sparrow gained popularity on iOS owing to the stock Mail client having a lot of shortcomings. Apple overhauled the email experience with iOS 6, but there are some new apps around that have managed to gain a considerable number of users. The Mailbox app experimented by combining mail and to-do lists, which is why people even put up with its waiting queue. LightMail doesn't offer changes that are as dramatic as those introduced by Mailbox, but the new app is still great if you are looking for an improved version of the iOS Mail app. LightMail supports a few gestures for letting you respond to messages quickly, and comes with a section where attachments from all your mails are accessible in one place. It is also possible to easily insert attachments from past messages into mails you are composing on your iPhone. Read More

Quickly Compose & Reply To Texts On iOS Without Launching Messages App

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You might be a fan of its themes or the well-organized conversation threads but for most users, biteSMS is all about quick compose and quick reply. The ability to type messages without waiting for an entire app to load can be really time-saving and efficient. Interactive reply windows have been a part of GO SMS as well, and a few Cydia tweaks in the past have even added a similar feature to the stock Messages app. With iOS 6 though, ImmediateSend stopped working, and hasn't received an update until now. So, taking advantage of this vacuum in the jailbreak store, a new tweak by the name of Messages has just reared its head. The tweak is a bit more detailed compared to other similar ones released in the past, and offers integration with Activator as well. It is also possible to tinker with the appearance of the quick reply window, and choose the number of previous messages from a thread that are loaded when you are composing your reply. Read More

Toggle iMessage Read Receipt Separately For Each Contact & Text

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If Facebook ever allows users to choose whether they want others to see the accusatory ‘seen’ indicator below their messages, we are pretty confident that a significant majority will likely disable the feature for good. iMessage has been offering similar read receipts for a long time, but at least you can turn them off at will from the Settings app. There are occasions, however, when keeping these receipts enabled can help. If you are talking to a close friend, it is probably convenient to keep the read receipt enabled, but during a conversation with your boss, you might not want that. SelectiveReading is a Cydia tweak that grants you complete control over iMessage read receipts. Users can choose to turn of the receipts for certain contacts, turn them permanently on for others, or even choose to make the decision individually for every message they receive. Read More

Place Text & Doodles Over iPhone Photos In Real Time With Text Camera

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A few months back, Instagram announced its decision to remove live filters from the famous app, and not many have received this omission kindly. You can always edit your photos after you have snapped them, but the capability of applying filters and other image effects even before shooting the picture is sure to come in handy every once in a while. A testament to this is the popularity apps offering real-time filters have gained in the recent past. Text Camera for iPhone goes beyond simple image effects, and lets you overlay doodles, text snippets and even quotes over the scene you are about to capture. You can easily adjust the position of these entities by simply dragging them around, and to keep you coming back for more, Text Camera offers the option to unlock more effects by sharing photos through it. Read More

Make Objects In Photos Pop Out Of Their Frames With PopAGraph For iOS

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Instagram can make your photos look good without much effort, but this convenience comes at a cost. Since there are a only a limited number of photo effects available in all one-touch photo editors, a lot of times monotony might start creeping into your pictures. This is why there is always a market for photo editors that aren't too complicated but still offer some level of control over the output. If you are looking for an iOS app of this kind, ColorStrokes might be the simplest available option, while AnyShape is a similar though more complicated photo editor. The newly released PopAGraph offers a way to edit selective portions of an image, making an object within pop out of the photo. The app lets you mask objects within a photo, apply a frame and then have these objects seem as if they're popping out of the frame, forming a 3D effect of sorts. Read More

Pit Your Karaoke Skills Against Friends With Just Sing It! For iPhone

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The popularity might have started to subside now, but games like Letterpress and Draw Something have managed to become the favorite time-killers for many iOS users. The main factor behind the success of such games is their ability to let you compete against real people, including your friends. So, you can easily show off your drawing skills or mental superiority using these games, but what if singing has always been your strongest point? Or maybe you just like karaoke and want to have some fun singing your favorite songs. Previously covered Sing! is a great app for karaoke singing but if you want an incentive to keep singing, you should definitely give Just Sing It! a try. Like Songify and Jam, the app augments your singing with different sound effects. You can share your songs over various social networks, and also challenge your friends (and strangers) to karaoke face-offs. Read More

Use The Gesture-Based TouchPal Keyboard As Default Input Method On iOS

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A discussion on gesture-based keyboards for any platform has got to be incomplete without mentioning the famed Swype. The app is massively popular on Android, and even enjoyed a brief period of iOS presence via Cydia. Now, however, it is not easy for iPhone owners to get a keyboard that is based on this type of slider input method. You can get your hands on third-party apps like TouchPal and Path Input, but having to type everything in a standalone app before copying it to the actual destination is never convenient. Every time an app like TouchPal is released in the App Store, users always wonder if they will ever get a tweak that integrates the gesture-based keyboard with iOS. If you have ever wanted to compose texts, notes, emails and just about anything on your iPhone using TouchPal as the default keyboard, there is now a tweak in the Cydia store that lets you do just that. In fact, this TouchPal tweak has been around in the jailbreak store for some time now, but has just shed its beta tag and works perfectly on both iOS 5 and iOS 6. Read More

Restrict Access To Apps & Photo Albums On iPhone With Protect Photos

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Despite the recent passcode-related bugs discovered in iOS 6, most users are satisfied with the security their iPhone offers by default. Having said that, when you are at home, or in any secure environment, the lock screen protection can get a bit annoying. There are a few ways of changing your device’s level of protection with a single gesture. If you have a jailbroken device, it is also possible to avoid the passcode altogether while keeping selective apps protected. Protect Photos is the latest Cydia tweak that lets you do this but as its name indicates, it focuses mainly on keeping your images private. The app can be used to put password protection on the stock Camera and Photos app and in addition, you can also restrict access of third-party apps to your image library. Read More

ClipCrop For iPhone Lets You Crop Photos Using Shapes & Characters

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The concept of cropping photos to fit different shapes and frames is not really new. Even if you don’t want to turn on your computer to edit photos, you can easily crop them or apply masks over them using several iPhone apps. In the past, we have covered apps like PIP Camera and SymbolGram, both of which allow you to use different masks to cut photos into patterns of your choice. While no app is likely to rival the vast collection of frames offered by PIP Camera, the app could have been a bit better in terms of customization options and sharing. SymbolGram, on the other hand, lacks variety. ClipCrop is a new app of this genre, and it seems to have found the perfect balance between simplicity and variety. The app offers a decent number of masks, a great UI, and plenty of sharing options. Read More

How To Hide Current Song’s Album Art & Info From iPhone Lock Screen

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Headphones were invented to let people listen to music without disturbing everyone in their vicinity. Another purpose of these little accessories is to provide you with some privacy while you are listening to songs in a crowded environment. If you own an iOS device, or any other smartphone for that matter, this privacy is violated to some extent due to the display of album art on your lock screen. We have to admit that the presence of the current song's information and album art on the lock screen is useful in most scenarios, but there are some tracks that you never want anyone to discover in your iPod. For such songs, the new Secret "Now Playing" (yes, it has quotation marks in its name) tweak is perfect. The tweak makes sure that users get to keep the control of their lock screen completely in their own hands, even when listening to a song. You can use Secret “Now Playing” to hide album art, artist name, album, and other information associated with the song from your iPhone’s lock screen. Read More

Udemy Brings Its Virtual Academy Of Video Courses To iPhone

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Education is not a process that should end at a certain age. After every few years, your skills get a bit outdated, and if you really want to stay at the top of your game, constant improvement is needed. Thanks to the internet and portable connected devices, it has become really easy to keep learning new things. A lot of apps in the ‘Education’ category of App Store are meant to help children, but even if you are a university student or are just trying to enhance your skill set on your own, there are apps like iTunes U that can be of assistance. In recent years though, people have started moving from books to videos as one of their primary modes of education. This is why Udemy has gained considerable fame in the few years it has been around. The service offers online courses for programming, cooking, designing, photography and almost any subject you can think of. Udemy has just released its iPhone client, and now you can truly keep learning new things anytime and anywhere. Read More

Pinnacle Lets You Hold Back Button In iOS Apps To Go To Main Menu Or Navigation History

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Anyone who switches to the iPhone from another smartphone is bound to feel a bit lost due to its minimalistic attitude towards hardware buttons. Even if a mobile device doesn’t have a dedicated shutter button, it is bound to have the essential Home and Back hardware buttons or softkeys. iOS, however, doesn’t roll that way, but that hasn’t stopped developers from coming up with alternative ways of navigating backwards in the OS. For example, tweaks like SwipeBack that make navigating bacwards within an app easier using gestures. Pinnacle is the latest addition to this sub-genre of tweaks. Unlike SwipeBack, Pinnacle isn't about going back one step in an app. The tweak is actually meant to help you easily return to the main page of any app that might have led you into its sub-menus. The greatest thing about Pinnacle though, it its ability to add a full ‘history’ list to the default back button in any app. Read More

mosaic.io Combines Multiple iPhones To Create One Big Display For Viewing Photos & Sharing Files

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People always love apps that are capable of performing mundane tasks in novel ways. If an app can also add convenience to the mix, even better. Bump and Chirp both are basically designed for file sharing, but one uses sound to transfer files between iDevices, while the other requires touching two devices together to share photos quickly. mosaic.io for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch does something similar, but in a way more fun and unique way. This universal iOS app lets its users place multiple iDevices side by side, and then stretches a single photo across all their displays. In simple words, if you own more than one iDevice, mosaic.io lets you create one big real-life photo mosaic out of their screens! The app is also capable of transferring Dropbox files between two or more devices (that are located in close proximity) via a simple gesture. Read More

View Real-Time Weather Info On Any Stock iOS App’s Icon

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We have seen iOS weather apps that change color with changes in temperature, and then there is Sun - a web app designed for iPhone that has an icon capable of displaying the current temperature in your area. All these apps are great, but most iOS users don’t like turning to third-party solutions if the stock apps are good enough. A testament to this fact is that a lot of people stopped looking for weather apps as soon the evad3rs released a fix for the Weather app crashing issue. The stock Weather app looks pretty good, specially in iOS 6 but ever since updating, I have been missing WeatherIcon - the tweak that brings the Weather app’s icon to life, and also lets you view the current weather stats on the iPhone status bar. Almost all major tweaks have gained iOS 6 compatibility during the course of the past few months and thankfully, WeatherIcon 6 brings the much sought-after weather tweak to the latest iOS firmware version as well. Read More

View Bandwidth, Memory & Storage Usage In iPhone Notification Center

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Users of SBSettings might know that the tweak's drop-down window isn't just a place to access system toggles; it also shows some basic system stats pertaining to your iPhone. N Stats is a Notification Center widget that isn't based on some truly novel idea, but it shows a few very important pieces of system data in graphical form, which is something not many apps or tweaks can accomplish without consuming a lot of screen space. This NC add-on shows just three system stats, but the developer has made sure that the displayed entities are the most important ones for most users. Thanks to N Stats, jailbreak users can get an idea of their device’s current RAM, storage and internet connection state at a glance. The tweak isn't customizable, but this only adds to its appeal since everything is ready to go as soon as you install it. Read More

Enable HDR & Grid Mode For iPhone Front Camera

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When it comes to the camera hardware in iOS devices, the rear cam has always had better resolution. Though in recent times, the differences between the software features enabled for the rear and front camera have started coming to the fore as well. HDR mode has been around in iOS for a long time and even after that, the stock Camera app has been updated with a few new features. When you are using the front-facing camera though, the app is pretty much like it has been since the days of iOS 4. There are no options, and you can't do anything other than shooting your photo. It has taken a while, but a developer over at the Cydia store has finally come up with a solution in Front HDR, which brings the front-facing camera almost at par with its rear counterpart. The tweak adds the familiar Camera app options menu that houses the HDR, panorama and Grid options. The panorama mode doesn't work, but the other two options are fully functional. Read More