SlyCam: Quickly & Discretely Capture Photos From Within iOS Notification Center [Cydia Tweak]

Cydia tweaks for Notification Center just won’t stop coming, and keep getting better. SlyCam is the latest addition to the collection of tweaks available for jailbroken iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices running iOS 5. However, rather than being an ordinary, slightly redundant widget, or a simple color changer, SlyCam is much more useful. The tweak allows you to quickly and discretely capture photos right from within the Notification Center. The tweak even sports a small window housing the camera’s viewfinder to help you get a better idea of what the camera is looking at without having to worry about prying eyes. Details to follow.

SlyCam is available for free in the ModMyi repo of the Cydia store. Once it is installed, you will have to enable it from within Settings > Notification Center. Once SlyCam has been toggled on, you will find a new widget in the Notification Center. The widget displays two buttons by default. If you point the camera at the target object, and hit the ‘+’ button, a photo will be taken of the scene in front of you, but no indication will be given to tell you that the pic has been snapped.

The second button (that is, the power button) displays the aforementioned preview window within the widget. The viewfinder is, however, quite small and will only give you a vague idea of the scene. In this mode too, you have to tap the ‘+’ button to snap a photo.

The photos taken using SlyCam are saved to the Camera Roll. The tweak can really come in handy if you want to take pictures quickly or secretly; there is little chance that someone will catch you by looking over your shoulder, especially if you aren’t using the viewfinder. If the situation demands absolute discreetness, try snapping the photo without enabling preview, but if you want a quality photo, with a small amount of risk of detection, the preview window is good to use. The fact that SlyCam is a widget adds to its usefulness, as having a separate app for it won’t have been as useful as being able to shoot right from within NC. Apart from using SlyCam for secrecy reasons, the widget is good enough to be used in normal circumstances as well. For example, if you are in a full-screen app and want to snap a photo quickly, it is more convenient to invoke the NC rather than going to the Springboard.

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Hamza Khalid

Handles Windows Phone, iOS and Cydia. A big WP7 fan, who just loves writing about anything and everything. Google+

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