Activator is an awesome jailbreak tweak by Ryan Petrich that you probably already know about. For those who’re new to jailbreaking, Activator lets you assign various actions that get called when a certain event, selected by you, occurs.

The trigger can be a gesture, a tap on a specific area, the press of a button, a change of charging state or a bunch of other options. The “actions” list is equally diverse, letting you launch apps, enable or disable settings toggles and is extensible via tweaks on Cydia.

However, one little known way to trigger an Activator action is by sending a text message. This is quite cool, and can come in handy if you want to remotely enable something like location services on your lost device etc.

Here are the simple steps to remotely enable location services:

• Install Activator from Cydia, if you haven’t installed it already.

• Launch Activator from the Home screen or navigate to Activator settings in the Settings app.

• Tap on Anywhere.

• Then tap on Edit at the top right corner.

• Scroll down and tap on Receive Message from the list of options.

• You will get an option to create a new event. In the Message field enter the text you want to send to trigger a particular Activator action. For example: turnonlocation to enable Location Services. Avoid using dictionary words as this could result in accidentally. You could use something discrete, if you don’t want the recipient to figure out what you’re upto.

• Keep the sender blank, which will allow you to send a message from any mobile phone to trigger the Activator action. If you want the message to be sent only from a trusted number then enter it in the Sender field.

• Then tap on Save in the top right corner, and then tap on Done. This will create the event.

• You now need to assign an Activator action to the newly created event. Scroll down and look for the Receive Message sub-section. Tap on the Message contains “turnonlocation”.

• Now from the list of Activator actions select the appropriate one. In case of example: Tap on Switchers, then tap on Switches (Activate), and tap on Location Services to enable it.

That’s it. Now when you can send a text message with “turnonlocation” from any mobile to remotely enable location services on your iPhone.

It’s a pretty cool way to remotely enable or disable something on your iPhone. Let me know how it goes in the comments.