The Pangu team released an iOS 8 – iOS 8.1 jailbreak yesterday, surprising many of us. There are a few reasons for the common jailbreaker to wait, as the jailbreak is primarily meant for developers, but in this post we list out the reasons to jailbreak your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.
Apple added a lot of features to iOS 8 that were inspired from the jailbreak community. But that doesn’t mean there’s no reason to jailbreak your iOS devices. Here are some reasons why you should:
Customizations:
Jailbreaking will allow you customize your iOS device in every way possible. You can install themes to change the look and feel of your iPhone or you can use Winterboard alternative like DreamBoard that allows you to transform your iPhone into an Android phone or transform your iPad into a Mac. Jailbreak tweaks also let you add a 5-icon dock, additional row of keys to iOS’ virtual keyboard, change the carrier logo and lots more.
You can change app icons that annoy you to better versions, designed by people from the community.
Messages on Steroids:
Apple revamped the Messages app and added some cool features like audio messages, self-destructing attachments and more. However, I still miss jailbreak tweaks like biteSMS, that offer features like Quick Compose, scheduled messages, delivery reports, signatures etc. that are not available in the native app.
Enhanced Lock Screen:
While iOS 8 added widgets, they’re placed inside the Notification Center, and we hope that tweaks will let you move them from the Notification Center to the lock screen. We’ve already seen plenty of Lock screen tweaks like IntelliScreenX and LockInfo for iOS 7.
Extend Control Center
With Control Center, we can only turn on or turn off 5 system toggles and 4 apps/features. CCToggles fixes this by allowing you to customize Control Center by allowing you to add extra toggles in the top row, and extra quick app launch icons in the bottom row.
For The Power User:
Activator transforms iOS into a mobile operating system for the power user. It allows you to invoke actions using shortcuts from anywhere in the iOS. You would be surprised by the number of shortcuts you can use such as double tap on the status bar, triple tap the Home button, double press the sleep button to trigger stock actions or launch an app or go to the Settings toggle. It offers almost limitless shortcuts to make it easier to use your iOS device.
Tethering:
Instead of paying a monthly fee to your carrier, jailbreak apps like PdaNet and MyWi, allow you to tether your laptop to your iPhone’s data connection for a one-time fee.
However, please remember that this can get you into trouble with your carrier so try this with caution.
Find My iPhone+:
Apple has made Find My iPhone more fool proof by adding Activation Lock, however it still does not offer features offered by jailbreak tweaks such as iCaughtU and iGotYa that take a photograph of the person who enters the wrong passcode using the front camera and PowerGuard, which prevents someone from turning off your device, makes it a lot more fool proof. There have been several instances it has helped catch a thief who is oblivious of such hacks.
Set Default apps:
One of the major limitations of iOS is the lack of an option to set your favorite third-party app as the default app. Thankfully jailbreak tweaks like MapsOpener allow you to set Google Maps as the default app instead of Apple’s Maps app and BrowserChooser and BrowserChanger allow you to change the default brower. You can also use jailbreak tweaks like NowNow to replace Google Now with Siri.
Use Wi-Fi Only Apps Over 3G network:
My3G is a jailbreak tweak that will make “Wi-Fi only” apps “believe” that they are running over a Wi-Fi network even though your iOS device is connected to the 3G network thus allowing you to use such “Wi-Fi only” apps such as Bloomberg Anywhere, Cablevision, DirecTV for iPad etc over a 3G network.
xCon is a complimentary jailbreak tweak, which bypasses jailbreak detection in apps, so you can use apps that currently prevent jailbroken iOS device users.
Set any song as Ringtone:
While it is possible to create ringtone and alerts from the songs you’ve purchased from iTunes, jailbreak tweak like AnyRing makes it very easy to set any song from your music library as a ringtone or alert tone.
Always on “Hey Siri” activation
Apple added a way to start Siri hands-free, but it works only when your device is plugged in. We’re hoping that there eventually is a tweak that makes this behavior always on.
Protect a folder or an app with Touch ID
You can lock apps with Touch ID using apps like Asphelia, BioLockdown, BioProtect, or AppLocker.
Unauthorized apps:
Even though there are more than 900,000 apps in the App Store, a small percentage of the apps get rejected for various reasons. Some of them like tawkon that allows you to check the amount of radiation emitted by your iPhone or grooveshark’s iPhone app for its online music streaming service can be installed from Cydia – the unofficial App store for such unauthorized apps.
Auxo 2
Just like its predecessor, Auxo 2 is an awesome replacement for the app switcher. It has been completely re-imagined for iOS 7, and comes with a number of new features and improvements such as Quick Switcher that lets you quickly switch between apps, Multi-Center that integrates Control Center with the app switcher, the ability to close all apps running in the background and lots more.
F.lux
We’ve all been there – a notification arrives on your iPhone late at night, and the screen brightness nearly blinds you for the first few seconds after unlocking. F.luxaims to solve this problem by adjusting the color of your iPhone’s display to better adapt to the time of the day.
You’d be amazed to realize how relaxed your eyes feel after installing this tweak, especially if you`tend to use your iPhone just before sleeping. In addition to this, it also helps you get rid of that eerie glow on your face when using your iPhone at night.
F.lux is available for free on Cydia.
Springtomize 3
Springtomize 3 allows you to customize every aspect of the iOS such as increase the number of apps in the dock to 10, give the dock a cool coverflow effect, change the duration of the system-wide animations, remove the page limits, customize the default animations, the lock screen, hide icons of stock apps, resize icons and lots more.
Springtomize 3 is available on Cydia for $2.99.
iFile
iFile offers a complete file manager and viewer for the iPhone. It even gives access to device files like Finder on the Mac. It also allows you to edit text files and property lists, which can be quite useful occasionally.
BatterySafe
BatterySafe is a nifty little jailbreak tweak that automatically turns off power hungry features such as cellular data, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth etc your iPhone gets low on battery power. It is available for free on Cydia.
BatterySafe is available for free on Cydia.
Barrel
Barrel adds cool animations while swiping through Home screen pages.
Change System Font
BytaFont 2 allows you change the system font on your jailbroken iPhone. It allows you to change the font in apps, Lock screen, and more.
Note: Please note that many of these tweaks haven’t been updated for iOS 8, but they do serve as great examples of why a jailbreak can be so useful and fun. For a list of jailbreak apps and tweaks that are compatible, head over to this post.
Did you jailbreak your iOS device? Let us know which tweaks you’ve already installed, and which ones are you looking forward to the most.
