iPhone Tweaks

Rotation lock is a useful feature, until it gets in the way. For example, reading on the iPhone can be easier with the lock enabled, to prevent everything from spinning around when you lie down. The problem happens when rotation is locked, and you’re trying to watch a widescreen video.

Your iPhone is forced to display this video in the vertical orientation, making the picture incredibly small with large black letterboxing at the top and bottom of the display. Fixing this involves switching off rotation lock then rotating the iPhone and restarting the video. The LandscapeVideo tweak makes this process easier on jailbroken devices.

Badges in iOS are great. They let you know when something important needs your attention, keep a count of unread emails, and can even tell you the temperature outside. But do you have too many badges floating around? All those red circles on every app icon can start to look like noise.

Now jailbroken iPhone users can quickly clean up extra badges with the tweak Clear Badges. This free tweak makes it simple to temporarily clear an annoying red badge number. Just hold down an app icon to enter wiggle mode on the home screen. Double tapping the offending icon while its wiggling will clear the badge immediately.

The strength of your cellular signal can make or break a data connection or phone call. The iPhone is no different, and as iOS users already know the signal strength is displayed on the status bar in the upper left. You can use an app like Signal 2 to get more details about your signal and where it’s coming from.

Sound like too much information? Bars will give you more information about your signal while keeping things simple. All this tweak does is take the signal bars you’re already familiar with and make them better.

Mac users will already know that OS X has a reflective, animated application dock across one side of the screen. When programs are launched or need your attention, the icons bounce, and running applications are indicated with a light below the program icon. Why not add these great features to your jailbroken iOS device?

ActiveDock makes this all possible, along with a variety of settings to control behavior. The best part is that ActiveDock is fully compatible with two other iOS dock-related tweaks, Auxo and Zephyr. Besides adding the stylish reflection under the app icons, ActiveDock provides several other features.

Do you watch hours of video on your iOS device, such as recordings of lectures or how-to instructions? You can actually save time and still see all of the important information with the FastForward tweak. Just as it sounds, FastForward makes it possible to watch video at a faster rate on jailbroken iOS devices.

Once installed, you can select which apps to enable with FastForward and choose a playback speed. With a playback rate of 2.0, your videos will play at twice the normal speed and in half the time.