Tips

Notification banners that pop up on iOS can be informative but they don’t hang around very long. There’s no way to change the length of time these banners display on the screen, they mysteriously go away by themselves. Sometimes you’d like the message to stick around a little longer.

Now on jailbroken devices the a handy tweak will keep notification banners as long as you prefer. Sticky Icky will wait until you dismiss the banner to remove it from the screen. Don’t mind the name, this tweak gets the job done if automatic banner dismissal is not for you.

Pandora fans may have noticed the only way to give a thumbs up or thumbs down to a particular track is to have the app open. Of course, with iOS you can skip tracks using the multitasking switcher or by pulling up music controls on the lock screen. But this won’t register your approval or disapproval of the track, steering the future of your radio station.

Now with the jailbreak tweak ThumbsUp installed, you can add thumb buttons to the lock screen music controls. This provides a simple and fast way to record your preferences with Pandora, without unlocking your device and navigating to the iOS app.

A new tweak from Saurik, the creator of Cydia promises to simplify the process of queueing up songs when music is already playing. Cyueue improves the stock iOS Music app by adding the option to Play Now, Play Next, or Play Last whenever a song is selected and another song is currently playing.

Not only does this prevent the current song from getting cut off, but a special playlist named Cyueue is created to store upcoming songs that will play next. You can even use a shortcut and double-tap the row of the song you want to select. Double tapping the left, middle or right of the row will play this song now, next or later respectively.

Recently the jailbreak tweak Flusterless was released, making it easier to enter Do Not Disturb (DND) mode from the iOS lock screen. Now thanks to Crescent, Siri can also be used to switch DND on and off with voice commands. Normally, the process of turning on DND involves navigating to Settings -> Do Not Disturb.

Crescent supports all of the same languages Siri currently supports, and accepts commands such as "Enable Do Not Disturb" and "Turn Do Not Disturb Off". Tell Siri the abbreviated "Do Not Disturb" and the assistant will issue a stock response, promising not to disturb you and providing a link to the DND settings.

One thing you can't do with iOS is create multiple user accounts, which means there's also no built-in guest mode. With only one passcode, when you lend a child or someone else your iPad or iPhone they can access many personal items and accounts. The jailbreak tweak iPrivacy seeks to change this by providing an easy way to set up guest mode to limit access to certain items.

Once installed, iPrivacy will prompt you to set up a PIN to access iPrivacy settings on the device. Then from Settings -> iPrivacy there are a variety of options. Guest mode can be activated from the lock screen using a special passcode, which differs from your normal passcode. It can also be activated at any time using an Activator action or SBSettings.