iPhone Tweaks

There are many ways to customize the iPhone keyboard. Besides some of the best third-party keyboards from the app store, jailbreaking brings a variety of additional options. Keyboard tweaks such as Bloard and ColorfulKBD Pro are some that focus on color.

Now PrismBoard offers a new option. Once installed, PrismBoard enhances the keystroke pop-ups when keys are pressed on the iPhone. As opposed to NoKeyPop, which hides the keystrokes entirely, PrismBoard highlights these oversized letters when keys are engaged.

SmoothCursor is a jailbreak tweak that adds a smooth animation to the iOS keyboard cursor. Normally typing characters results in the cursor jumping to the front of the line at all times. Users of Microsoft Word 2013 have already been introduced to a smooth cursor animation, which changes the traditional cursor behavior.

Now fans of this animation can add the feature to iOS with SmoothCursor. Once installed, there are no settings or options to configure. The cursor will appear to smoothly drift across the line while typing in any app.

Dynamic wallpapers are one of the more interesting additions to iOS, having been released with iOS 7. Since then, Apple has not added any new animated backgrounds to the mix. Jailbreaking remains the only way to unlock hidden dynamic wallpapers or get completely new dynamic wallpapers installed on your device. Particle Wallpapers continues this trend.

Once installed from Cydia, Particle Wallpapers adds a collection of eight new dynamic wallpapers under Settings -> Wallpaper. While each option in the collection is similar, they come in different color schemes. The animation resembles flying through space or some kind of cosmic explosion continually happening right on the home screen. Particle Wallpapers is hard to miss, with a much more aggressive look than the stock dynamic wallpapers' subtle animation.

Unlocking the iPhone normally brings up whatever app was open when the sleep/wake button was pressed. Sometimes this is a problem, because whatever activity, video or music that was last displayed will still be opened upon unlock. Eclair gives jailbreakers more control over what appears when the device is first unlocked.

To improve privacy, Eclair can prevent the last used app from appearing at all. It works by hiding or terminating the app automatically when the device is locked. Once installed, there's a toggle to enable the tweak in Settings, along with some options to configure. Besides the option to hide or kill an open app after lock, Eclair is capable of always opening the SpringBoard home page at unlock.

The jailbreak tweak OneHandWizard replaces default Reachability behavior with a completely new interface. This interface is designed to knock the socks off of Reachability, providing robust features for those with larger devices like the iPhone 6 Plus. Once installed, OneHandWizard will appear using the same home button double tap used by Reachability.

What happens next is completely different. A full-screen interface of the iPhone screen is displayed, reduced in size to accommodate one-handed use. Swiping on the background moves this interface to the left or right side of the display, making it customizable for right or left handed usage. The interface can also be adjusted in size, by simply grabbing the corner of OneHandWizard.