Jailbreaking

The jailbreak tweak Stratos is heavily inspired by the classic multitasking tweak Auxo. The developers of Stratos have included some interesting features in their vision of iOS 7 and 8 multitasking. The tweak is described as a way to "simplify the way you interact with your iPhone". Simply put, Stratos brings a multitasking app switcher to the Control Center and separates media controls, app switching, and control toggles into three separate pages.

Once installed, there is a toggle to enable Stratos under Settings, along with many options to configure the tweak. Besides displaying running and recently used app cards directly in the Control Center, Stratos makes it possible to swipe up on an app card to open it immediately. Stratos can be configured to automatically open to the media control page when music is playing, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Popular is a jailbreak tweak for the app switcher that replaces the favorite and recent contacts icons. Instead of these, Popular displays your favorite and most often used apps right above the full size app cards. The tweak dynamically sorts app icons, putting the most-used apps first, right next to your favorites.

Once installed, there are several customizations that can be accessed via Settings -> Popular. When it comes to the most "popular" apps, usage statistics can be viewed directly in the settings. The Maximum Icon Count can be adjusted anywhere from 5 to 75, which controls how many apps will appear in the launcher.

Tracking cellular data usage by apps and the iOS system is possible using Settings -> Cellular. In addition to data usage itemized by app, system services and roaming totals are also listed. While this can help keep track of data usage, left to its own devices iOS will never reset the stats. Users must manually tap the Reset Statistics button.

Monitoring cellular data usage can be more useful when the statistics are only recorded for a specific interval, such as your billing cycle. The jailbreak tweak ReStats adds this functionality to iOS 8, automatically resetting the totals based on user preferences. Once installed, configuring the tweak is a two-step process.

As many jailbroken iPhone owners already know, the classic MobileTerminal app has not been updated to support iOS 8. Fortunately, developer lordscotland took the time to fork the original terminal emulator. This project has resulted in MTerminal, which provides command line access to iOS directly from the home screen.

MTerminal is packed with features, making it a robust solution that takes advantage of the iOS touch screen. The app is also optimized for larger displays, such as those found on the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. A variety of gestures are supported, for example tapping on the edge of the terminal window emulates an arrow key in the appropriate direction.

Apple on Monday released the second beta of iOS 8.3 to developers. The second version features several new languages for Siri including "Russian, Danish, Dutch, Portuguese, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, and English for India," according to 9to5Mac. This is the first time that Siri has learned any new languages since iOS 6.0 was released in 2012.

Developers have also discovered that iOS 8.3 includes a new Wireless CarPlay feature, a more diverse Emoji picker, support for Apple Pay in China and that Siri's speech has been tweaked.

iOS 8.3 beta 3 is now available as OTA update from the Developer Center.