Tips

For heavy users of the built-in iOS Notes app, there are already some different ways to share notes. Besides using cut and paste to transfer notes to another app, tapping the share button provides two options for direct sharing: Messages and Mail. The jailbreak tweak ShareNotes changes all this, providing two additional ways to send iOS Notes directly to social media.

Installing ShareNotes from Cydia will add Facebook and Twitter buttons to the share function of the Notes app. Tapping the appropriate button will create a message from your note text, just like sharing to these places with any other app.

Searching on the iPhone or iPad can be simplified with Spotlight, which provides a one-stop location to find various different items on your device. One thing that normally can't be changed is the look of the Spotlight background. Swiping to the right on the first home screen page will bring up the default Spotlight screen, which is opaque enough to obscure the home screen background.

Those with jailbroken devices can now change this default look to reveal the background behind search results. The effect is achieved with a slider to change Spotlight screen transparency in the Settings once the tweak Clear The Air is installed from Cydia. Like many free tweaks, Clear The Air is a simple way to change one aspect of iOS.

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.