Jailbreaking

Adjusting the display brightness on an iOS device has become easier thanks to the release of Control Center in iOS 7. One swipe from the bottom of the screen makes it possible to adjust brightness with a slider, instead of navigating through Settings. For those who change their display brightness often there's an even easier solution for jailbreakers.

StatusBright brings screen brightness adjustments directly to the iOS 7 home screen status bar. Once the tweak is installed, there are no settings to configure. A swipe from left to right along the status bar at the top of the screen will increase brightness. Swipe to the left to dim the screen. This swipe action along the status bar acts as a built-in slider that can change the brightness at any time.

One great thing about the iOS Mail app is the ability to mark emails as unread. This can help remind the user that messages are waiting and need to be reviewed again later. Some prefer to use this trick instead of flagging or leaving the mail marked read. Stock iOS 7 has no such function in place for the Messages app.

Now thanks to the jailbreak tweak Unread, iMessage and SMS threads can be marked unread. Once installed from Cydia, the Unread tweak has no settings to configure. Simply open the Messages app and toggle the read / unread status by tapping and holding a message thread. The blue dot indicating whether or not a message has been read will display accordingly.

Animated GIFs have experienced a vast resurgence on today’s Internet. Ever since the 90s the popular format has circulated widely on the web and elsewhere. iOS devices display animated GIFs properly in the Messages and Mail apps, however saving these images to the Camera Roll results in a freeze.

Now you can restore the animation in the stock Photos app with one of the two jailbreak tweaks Giffy or GIFViewer. Once installed, animated GIFs will appear as intended in the iOS Photos app. There are no settings to configure or toggles to worry about. While the thumbnail preview of the image will be static, tapping the image to view the full screen GIF results in animation.

Nothing is more important to a mobile device than battery life. Obviously, without electricity the iPhone is nothing but a brick. There are many battery saving tips that can help, but none of these is a comprehensive solution. BattSaver for iOS 7 provides highly customizable, one-stop radio management tools to extend battery power.

Users can toggle any number of specific options to control when and where radio components are turned on or deactivated to save juice. While the number of toggles can be overwhelming, there are battery saving Strategy presets such as iMessage friendly, Normal, Aggressive, and Ultimate. Each level will take more aggressive steps to disable cellular and Wi-Fi radios depending on circumstances.

The iPhone lock screen does a decent job of providing music controls and information when tracks are actively playing. For those looking to spruce things up a bit, the jailbreak tweak Spin brings a whole new look to the music lock screen. Album art is centered in a circle that spins when a track is skipped, with a circular scrubber that shows current position.

The design looks interesting, and provides a variety of options to customize the look and behavior of the music lock screen. The latest version of Spin (0.1-4) incorporates several improvements and bug fixes. The screenshot above illustrates one possible configuration, with a solid dark background. Pause and skip controls have a distinctly iOS 7 inspired style.