Velox, the tweak that supercharges the iPhone’s homescreen, is out on Cydia for $1.99 on the Big Boss repo. The jailbreak tweak allows you to check Notifications right from your Home screen or gives you quick access to an app via an enhanced folder view.
Taking actions and accomplishing tasks right from the home screen is a concept alien to the iOS ecosystem, but Velox gives a great preview at how a “wedget-ey” iOS might look like.
Below, we describe some of Velox’s most awesome features:
Notifications
Instead of pulling down Notification Center, you can swipe on individual apps right on the home screen to see its notifications, and a handy “Pull to clear” gesture for clearing notifications on a per-app basis.
Settings toggles
Instead of activating SBSettings, NCSettings or Auxo’s toggle pane, Velox gives you access to important toggles through its folder view, when you swipe the Settings app icon. In addition to the toggles you’d expect, there’s also a brightness control slider.
Photos and Camera
Velox gives you a camera view when you swipe the Camera icon, which you can use to click a picture or shoot a video. It also has a handy sharing panel accessible in the folder view associated with the Photos app which lets you share the last photo taken through channels like Twitter, Facebook and Mail.
Stock Maps and Google Maps
The folder view associated with the stock iOS 6 Maps app and the Google Maps app gives you access to the Map around your current location, which you can then zoom and pan. The map tiles are Apple’s, even on the Google Maps icon, which is important for people in countries with bad Apple Maps coverage.
Music apps
For apps that play music, like the stock iPod app or third party services like Pandora and Songza, Velox displays a New Playing view which also lets you pause/play, skip back and forth, and scrub through tracks. The scrubbing works only with the stock Music app, though.
Reminders and Calendar
The folder view associated with these apps lets you see a list of the latest events or reminders, and hitting an item takes you to that specific event or reminder in the app.
Safari, Chrome and Web Clips
Velox displays a mini browser in the folder view associated with webclips or browsers. In the case of webclips, the webview opens the predefined page, but in the case of Chrome and Safari, you can enter in a URL and browse as you would normally.
Phone, Messages and Contacts
A swipe on the Phone app icon displays all your recent calls, with an option for you to call back or message your contact. The Messages app similarly displays your unread messages and has an option to Quick Compose a new text, cutting down the step of opening the app. The Contacts app gives you a list of all your contacts along with the option to search and call from right within the app.
Twitter and Facebook
Velox also gives you a window into the official Twitter and Facebook apps through the swipe gesture, letting you navigate and use the social networks right from the home screen.
Cydia and iFile
Velox also has folder views for Cydia and iFile, two very popular jailbreak apps. For Cydia, Velox displays the latest changes to tweaks and apps, but strangely takes you to Safari instead of Cydia itself. In case of iFile, Velox’s folder view presents a list of all files and folders under “/” , and lets you go up and down in the file system hierarchy.
App Store downloads
When you swipe on an app that’s newly downloaded or currently being updated, Velox shows you the completion status in its folder view, which I found very handy.
And More
The app also has a Mail folder view, which for some strange reason, I couldn’t get to work. Velox also has views for the stock Notes and Weather apps which work as you would expect. Additionally, they’ve kept their folder view system flexible for third-party developers to adopt via an API, so going forward, we should start seeing Velox addons on Cydia for apps that aren’t supported by default.
My only annoyance with the tweak is that it doesn’t works with apps that are inside a folder, which does make sense since folder-within-folder is a weird interaction, but it requires me to change my home screen arrangement.
The tweak is packed with functionality, and can be purchased from Cydia for $1.99. I’d go as far as to say that it has more features that Auxo. As of now Velox only works on the iPhone, but the devs say iPad support is being worked on. Velox doesn’t work well with Infiniboard, FolderEnhancer and SBRotater, so if you have these installed you might want to wait before hitting purchase.
