How to stop URLs from appearing in iPhone’s Control Center

BY Osas Obaizamomwan

Published 8 Apr 2015

Control Center - URL

I watch plenty of music videos, funny web clips, and Netflix shows all on my iPhone. iOS 8’s Control Center makes it easy to control this media from my home screen and lock screen. But if you want a little added privacy when it comes to what you’re watching, you may want to look into this free tweak.

Even if you close out of your video or browser window, the URL will still remain in the control center for anyone that uses your phone to see. Furthermore, these URLs can be pulled up from the lock screen, so a person wouldn’t even need to unlock your phone to see what you were watching. No matter what the content, NSFW or completely innocent, CleanUp is a free tweak that replaces the URL with a custom text of your choosing.

CleanUp - Custom Text

Head over to Cydia on your jailbroken iPhone and search for CleanUp. You will need to respring your device once it’s installed.

CleanUp - Install - Cydia

After respring, head over to Settings -> CleanUp and enable the tweak. Next, you can create a custom label or use the default, “Web Clip” to replace the URL text. This tweak works best with Safari, but I have tested it with Chrome and it works decently well with that as well.

CleanUp - Enable - Custom Text

You may also find that YouTube URLs are not replaced. So if you want to keep your Taylor Swift obsession a secret, you might want to avoid YouTube for the time being.

Check out some more cool tweaks here and let us know if CleanUp’s privacy feature gives you a little more peace of mind.