iPhone Tweaks

The speakerphone on the iPhone 5 may have improved volume over previous models, but in some situations it's still not enough sound when you're trying to hear someone's voice. Luckily for those with a jailbroken iPhone 5 running iOS 6, there's a tweak called Volume Amplifier that boosts speaker or headphone volume beyond the normal 100 percent when calling.

Once installed, simply keep pressing the volume up button beyond the normal maximum and the sound will be increased up to 200 percent. Volume Amplifier has no settings to configure and will not install an application icon on the home screen. The tweak works by directly manipulating the audio stream to increase the sound level noticeably.

Reading notifications directly on the iOS home screen just got easier thanks to the jailbreak tweak Badger. Outstanding badges on app icons might lead you to open notification center, or open the app to see what's up. Badger circumvents all of these roundabout methods, making it possible to read and delete app alerts immediately on the home screen.

Once installed, Badger can be customized from Settings -> Badger. Default settings mean that swiping up on an app icon with a badge will reveal the latest notifications, much like opening an iOS folder. From there, you can swipe to delete or tap the alert text to read the full notification.

The MiniPlayer that comes with iTunes 11 provides album art, audio controls and more in a compact window that saves space. Now you can bring this power directly to the iPhone home screen with the jailbreak tweak MiniPlayer. Why open the Music app if you don't have to?

The MiniPlayer interface was created by Ayecon theme designer Surenix, which means the tweak meshes right into iOS with a polished look. Swipe gestures can be used to hide, move or show the MiniPlayer, and the interface is collapsible to the right or left of the iPhone screen. Tapping the album art will open the Music app.

Sure, Siri is a personal assistant, but wouldn't it be great if the iPhone had a personal secretary, too? Now thanks to a jailbreak tweak called Secretary your device can read texts, notifications and even calendar events using the built-in text to speech functions of iOS.

Secretary can be set to read specific items including a count of missed calls, count of unread messages, SMS or iMessage senders and the content of the messages. Output can be piped through the iPhone speaker or a Bluetooth accessory.

Sometimes an iOS jailbreak tweak changes the rules of the game. Velox is one such tweak, bringing a whole new level of functionality to the iPhone in a streamlined package that might as well have been designed by Apple. We've seen these types of tweaks before, such as Auxo or Infinifolders, however Velox can fundamentally change how you interact with iOS on a daily basis.

Here's how it works: simply swipe down over an app icon on the home screen and a folder-like section will open. Inside this area will be recent information from the app, or menus to perform specific functions. For example, swiping down on the stock weather app icon will reveal weather info right on the home screen without ever having to open the app.