iPhone Tweaks

Picking music tracks when the tunes are playing normally takes a few steps when your iPhone is locked. Skipping tracks is easily accomplished using the lock screen music controls. But the thing that takes time is actually going and selecting a song or picking a track from a different album directly. Now thanks to the free jailbreak tweak Pluck, there's a new shortcut.

Pluck integrates with the lock screen music controls on your iOS device, making it possible to choose a new song, playlist or album in the stock music app without unlocking. Simply double-tap the home button to bring up the music controls, and with Pluck installed an add music button appears along with the pause, skip and AirPlay buttons.

Hard to believe when the iPhone was first released there was no way to send a photo or video using MMS. Now besides the ability to send these types of files, iMessage has expanded the capabilities of iOS devices to communicate. One jailbreak tweak named Doodle Message seeks to expand the capabilities of several messaging apps even further.

With Doodle Message, an MMS or iMessage composition gets the option to draw directly on the screen. Not only can you create a doodle from scratch and send your masterpiece to friends and family, but the tweak makes it possible to draw on a new or existing photo. This can be a neat way to highlight part of the image or write something fun directly on the image.

App badges in iOS are informative but all those big red circles can become annoying. There are ways to quickly remove badges like Clear Badges, but this is a temporary solution. One thing you can do with a jailbroken device is customize the badge appearance to your liking.

The appropriately named tweak, Badge Customizer is a free way to do just that. After the package is added from Cydia, there will be a new area in Settings -> Badge Customizer where all the magic happens. The first thing to notice is a conveniently located Respring button right in the tweak’s settings to apply changes. Like many of these modifications, the effects of the tweak can be fully enabled or disabled with one toggle.

Ever since the first iPod was released, Apple has been working on improving the experience of listening to music on mobile devices. iOS provides a few different ways of controlling the music and seeing what track is currently playing. Developer Daniel Taub has added yet another convenient option.

The jailbreak tweak is named Music HUD, and it functions to provide not only a heads-up display of the current selection, but also gestures to pause songs or mute instantly. What’s cool about Music HUD is that all of this is customizable and accessed with one touch of the volume buttons.

Every iOS device has a lock screen, regardless of whether or not the passcode is set up for security. Sliding to unlock not only reveals the home screen, but Apple has designed the transition to be a smooth and fluid motion. Only thing is that everyone’s device has the exact same zoom and fade animation.

Now with a jailbroken device and the free tweak LiveWire, the unlock animation can be changed to something more interesting. The developer HASHBANG Productions describes the new animation as a sliding doors effect.