Now that iOS 7 is jailbroken and the drama has settled down, it’s time to actually start playing around with some jailbreak apps. Here are some of our favourites currently available in Cydia for iOS 7.
Pictures: Gualtiero Boffi (Shutterstock), Dragomer Maria (Shutterstock)
Jailbreaking has changed a lot over the years, and the main reasons to jailbreak these days are to customise the look of iOS, fix annoyances, and add some clever new features. It’s certainly not as exciting as it once was, but there’s still plenty to do. If you’re new to jailbreaking, check out our guide to Cydia to learn how to search for and install apps and tweaks. Otherwise, let’s get to downloading.
Activator
Activator’s the easiest way to customise button and multitouch functionality on iOS, and the most recent version even allows you to create triggers for the TouchID button on the iPhone 5s. Basically, Activator makes it so you can set up custom gestures or button presses to do whatever you want. For example, you could make the volume buttons launch an app, or make your pinky finger send you back to the home screen. Activator is the backbone for a number of other jailbreak apps and tweaks making it a required install for just about anything that uses custom gestures.
Want this jailbreak app? Search Cydia for Activator to download and install it for free.
BatterySafe
BatterySafe is one of the more clever new iOS 7 jailbreak apps. When your iPhone gets low on battery power, BatterySafe automatically turns off power-hungry features like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It doesn’t have a ton of customisation options yet, but it’s still a simple way to automate your device’s settings to help save on battery life.
Want this jailbreak app? Search Cydia for BatterySafe to download and install it for free.
BioLockdown
BioLockdown allows you to use your iPhone 5s TouchID sensor to lock apps, restrict settings and more. With it enabled, a fingerprint is required to enable settings or launch apps. We’ve talked about a similar app before, but BioLockDown is cheaper at $US2 and has a few more options to customise how it works. If you’re looking for a tweak that’ll launch certain apps with certain fingers, the upcoming Touchy is worth keeping your eye on and should be released within a week or so.
Want this jailbreak app? Search Cydia for BioLockDown to download and install it for $1.99.
BiteSMS
The iOS 7 version of BiteSMS is still in beta, but it’s working well enough for you to use every day. BiteSMS supercharges your messaging, allowing you to easily reply to incoming texts from anywhere in iOS, mark messages to read later and plenty more. It’s super powerful and has enough features that many people jailbreak just to use it.
Want this jailbreak app? Add the http://test-cydia.bitesms.com/ repository to Cydia and search for BiteSMS to download and install it for free.
BytaFont 2
If you want to change the font on your iOS device, BytaFont 2 is the easiest way to do it. After you install it, you can change the font in apps, on the lock screen and more. The fonts themselves are still getting updated for iOS 7 support, but the app is up and working so you can get to customising your iOS device however you see fit.
Want this jailbreak app? Search Cydia for BytaFont 2 to download and install it for free.
CCControls
As you might expect, the first thing jailbreak app developers went for was the new Control Center in iOS 7. A bunch of different tweaks and apps already exist to customise Control Center, but our favourite is CCControls. It has a lot of options: you can change which preference toggles appear in Control Center, what they look like, theme the look of Control Center, and more. It’s also very easy to use so you don’t have to spend a lot of time setting it up.
Want this jailbreak app? Search Cydia for CCControls to download and install it for free.
CCHide
If you’d rather delete things from Control Center, CCHide is the best way to do it. Just as you’d expect, CCHide allows you to remove different settings from Control Center, remove entire sections, and basically shrink down Control Center to just the options you want. It’s simple, but does the job it sets out to do. One note though: don’t use CCHide with CCControls, it will cause your device to crash.
Want this jailbreak app? Search Cydia for CCHide to download and install it for free.
iCleaner Pro
iCleaner is a simple way to scan your iOS device for unnecessary files and clear up storage space on your iOS device. You can quickly delete all kinds of things that waste space, such as message attachments, Safari cache and application cache. It’s not officially available for iOS 7 yet, but you can check out the beta right now. Since it is in beta, you’ll use it at your own risk, so be careful what you do with it and don’t delete anything you need.
Want this jailbreak app? Add the exile90software.com/cydia/beta/ repository to Cydia and search for iCleaner Pro to download and install it for free.
iFile
iFile is a file browser and management app that gives you access to every file on your jailbroken iOS device. You can copy, paste and move files around, edit text files, import files onto your iOS device, upload them and more. Basically, iFile is Finder for your iPhone, and it’s good to have it around when you need it.
Want this jailbreak app? Search Cydia for iFile to download and install it. You’ll get a free seven-day trial to check it out, and it’s $4.99 after that.
SwitchSpring
The new app switcher in iOS 7 makes it so it’s difficult to bulk quit apps. If you want to quit all your apps at once, Switch Spring ties that action to swiping up on your home screen when you’re in the app switcher. When you do that, you’re given the option to quit apps or restart the device. If you’re not into the new app switcher’s obnoxious way of closing apps, SwitchSpring is a must have.
Want this jailbreak app? Search Cydia for SwitchSpring to download and install it for free.
The Best Minor Tweaks and Extras
- Assistant Unrestrictor: Every once in a while, Siri’s servers go down and when that happens, the assistant stops working. Assistant Unrestrictor routes Siri over to Voice Control when it’s unavailable, so you can at least do a few minor things like change the music track, play albums, or make a phone call.
- Bloard: Prefer the sleek dark keyboard in iOS 7 over the white one? Bloard enables it all the time.
- CyDelete7: CyDelete makes it so you can delete Cydia apps just like you delete App Store apps. Just tap and hold on an app, wait for it to jiggle, and delete away.
- Fav: Fav lets you pick one application that can be immediately accessible from the home screen with a right swipe (where Spotlight used to be).
- F.lux: F.lux automatically changes your screen brightness and temperature to make it easier to read and to helps reduce eyestrain.
- MapsAllCountries: MapsAllCounties enables turn-by-turn directions in the Maps app in countries where it’s not officially supported.
- Messages Customiser: Don’t like the boring blue (or green) colours in the Messages app? Messages Customiser allows you to change the colours to just about whatever you want.
- Nitrous: Chrome is slower than Safari on iOS because of some Apple-imposed restrictions. Nitrous removes those restrictions and makes Chrome just as fast.
- NoNewMark: NoNewMark gets rid of the blue dot that appears on updated and new apps.
- NoSlowAnimations: As the name suggests, NoSlowAnimations seriously speeds up animations in iOS 7.
- Open In App for Photos: Open In App for Photos gives you the option to immediately share photos from the Photos app to any app that supports image import (such as Dropbox, QuickOffice and Skitch).
- SwipeSelection: SwipeSelection makes editing text on the iPad and iPhone way better. Instead of forcing you to hunt and peck to find a line of text, SwipeSelection allows you to use gestures to get around and it’s a lot easier to use.
- Swipey: Swipey is an app launcher that works from your lock screen. All you need to do is swipe left and your favourite apps appear for launching.
- TapTodaysCalendar: Ever tried to tap the date in Notification Center thinking that it’d take you to the calendar app? For some bizarre reason, it doesn’t work, but TapTodaysCalendar makes it so it does.
We couldn’t cover every single jailbreak app and tweak we love, and some, like SBSettings, haven’t been updated for iOS 7 yet. Check out last year’s roundup for a bunch more awesome jailbreak apps that aren’t quite ready for iOS 7 yet.
Comments
5 responses to “The Best Jailbreak Apps And Tweaks For iOS 7”
I’ve spent the last week and a bit getting into Cydia and iOS 7 tweaks after my son was given an old iPad from a family member. Having not used iOS since the early iPhone days, I was expecting to be pleasantly surprised with all the things I could do with a jailbroken iDevice.
But I wasn’t. Even after jailbreaking, the iPad comes nowhere near an Android device for functionality and user experience. Limited hardware buttons and no persistant soft buttons (e.g. a ‘back’ button). Crappy keyboard that always displays letters in capitals and doesn’t support swiping? Limited GPU support for video codecs? And after 10 years iTunes is still an abomination.
It just goes to show how people will happily throw their money at something if they think it’s cool.
You obviously couldn’t find the right tweaks in Cydia… They all there.
As commented below and elsewhere…. It also shows that when you approach anything with an obvious bias for the alternative, you’ll be blind to that which you judge so poorly.
Apart from being wrong about persistent soft buttons – even if true, who cares . It’s a tablet, it’s a touch interface???
Capitals??? Oh you mean the capital at the start of each new sentence, to which it then changes to correct grammatical prose – O T humanity, how dr they B corrct, they shud lrn 2 spell
VLC does everything you can do on a droid with easier customisations.
iTunes – who cares?? If your using it for more than a quick way to restore or upgrade then you’d be as stupid as you describe
Why is it there are never apple fans negatively infecting Droid threads but the first chance an Apple bashing myopic android fan gets, they’ll dump all over an apple thread for a single feature that Apple doesn’t have that limited little feature that Android does while handily ignoring the missing Android features, or redundant Android points of difference
Wanna go play with NFC anyone?? – oh sorry, outmoded tech due to LEBT…..
Ahh carry on lil fella…. Bright side when crap is cheap it’s easy to replace junk than quality 😉
I think you need to do your research a little more. Go find the right tweak, not everyone pay for the tweak, theres always another tweak that is free and has the function. Also theres lot of repo out there that provide the same tweak (clone) at no cost (not recomm, but that your choice to make)
The hilarious part is all the “OS destroying issues” you listed (besides the soft buttons of course) have jailbreak tweaks that change all of them if wanted. You obviously didn’t even spend 15 minutes looking. There is several tweaks that have the keyboard change to the selected case. Swipe to Select changes the selection method.
Sounds like a fanboy who has never owned an iPad.
sorry im gonna have to agree with everyone else here i love my android just as much as the next guy hell maybe even more than my ipad mini… however everything besides the softbuttons can and has been tweeked im gonna have to concur with everyone on here saying that you didnt even spend 15 minuets to poke around on what was available maybe check out cydia again?. if you really cant find what your looking for google is your friend sometimes you may have to end up adding repos to cydia and rerunning your search to find what your looking for keep in mind that none of these are verified by apple and theres always *that* risk especially when adding repos to cydia however if you really want it youll look up how to get it instead of complaining its not there.. because really it is…
Yeh limited hardware buttons, it’s ONLY got the home, volume, power AND silent buttons. As for persistent back have you not noticed the slide in from left gesture in ios7 yet? There’s also VLC which supports most video codecs and I can’t remember the last time I used iTunes as I don’t need it as iOS devices are not dependant on it!
On and yeah and I spent last year forgiving android on my nexus 4 over and over again for it’s compartmentalised and inconsistent nature. I don’t miss the soft buttons as the OS is smart enough to include navigation within the UI. coming back to iOS is like a breath of fresh air!
Needed jailbreak for my iphone
Evasi0n7 try googling it. I love my iPhone…. Now that it’s jail broken. And android is good start to an OS with time it may turn things around. But after using b
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ILHNHJvJkA
another tool like the iCleaner, but more powerful