Impulse is a new jailbreak tweak that intuitively allows you to control music playback on your iPhone while the device is locked using touch gestures. Based on multitouch functionality, you can tap on the iPhone’s screen to play or pause the music or swipe your finger up and down or left and right to adjust the volume or change tracks respectively.
After installing Impulse from Cydia, which requires a jailbroken device, a new preferences menu is added to the Settings app for customizing the tweak. There are several options listed within the menu, including a main toggle kill switch, ability to set an idle threshold for how long the tweak remains active, secure tap feature and inverted gestures.
By setting a longer idle threshold, the tweak will remain active for a longer period of time after the music is paused or stopped for immediate interaction with the device. Just keep in mind that setting a longer threshold will likely chew through your iPhone’s battery life faster, so keeping this setting around the 2 minute mark is probably ideal.
If you are worried that you might put your iPhone in your pocket and accidentally perform a gesture that affects your music playback, there is also an option to enable inverted gestures. When turned on, this feature requires you to make a single tap on the screen first before Impulse is activated and recognizes further gestures as music playback controls.
Last, there is an option for having Impulse ignore music so that the idle threshold applies to when you lock your iPhone while no music is being played. A user guide can be found within the Impulse preferences menu in the Settings app for further instructions and helpful information on how to use the tweak to its full extent.
Overall, this is a useful tweak for music aficionados looking for a more convenient playback experience on iPhone. I can definitely see the real-life value of using this tweak while running or exercising, given that you don’t have to always stop your activity or workout to turn on your iPhone’s display and shuffle through your music library.
If you are running low on battery life, this tweak will always conserve more juice since the display can remained turned off for longer periods of time while listening to music. If you value this tweak, be sure to give iOS developer Noeliel a quick thank you as a small token of appreciation for his work.
Impulse is $1.99 on the Cydia Store in the default BigBoss repo for iPhone and iPod touch devices running iOS 7.
Is this tweak worth a cup of coffee to you?
