Modifying, enhancing and tweaking Apple’s iOS devices has become more than just a hobby for a lot of people over the last few years. Members of the community surrounding the liberation of iOS devices live and breathe the jailbreak scene, and when we go through a period of not having an up-to-date untethered solution, it genuinely hurts.
Certain developers and theme creators make a good living from selling their wares on Cydia and obviously feel the strain when no jailbreak is available, but what about from a user’s perspective? We sometimes don’t actually require a device to be jailbroken in order to modify it or alter certain aspects of the stock interface. We take a look at some of the best tweaks and modifications available for iOS devices that don’t rely on the device being jailbroken.
Changing the carrier logo on the device
Once upon a time, changing the carrier logo on the status bar of the iPhone was deemed to be a great achievement. Things progressed even further with Cydia packages like Zeppelin allowed users to create their own icons and carrier logo graphics and display them with ease on the phone. It wasn’t that long ago that we were able to get our hands on the CarrierEditor software that allows us to follow through a few simple steps to input our own carrier logo graphics through the process of a simple carrier iTunes restore. Check out our original post from a how-to guide that doesn’t require a jailbreak. Windows users can use CustomCarrierLogo tool to get the job done.
Installing a themed skin to the iPhone
The iPhone is a fantastic piece of hardware, but may not always be everyone’s cup of tea when it comes to the design of the iOS interface. Apps also have different icons, made from different colors with different graphics on. Those who like to keep everything looking uniform can sometimes find this a little distressing. The lack of a jailbreak would generally mean that altering the theme wouldn’t be possible but it is actually possible to install a Black Orbs theme through the installation of specific configuration files.
To get up and running with the Orbs theme installation, you will first of all need to download the configuration file that needs to be installed to the device. When the file is downloaded; simply load the file from off the phone and choose Install from the navigation bar. The theme also works best with a totally black wallpaper on the iPhone 5, a simple search on the web will land you with some amazing wallpapers. When the mobile configuration file has been installed, click Finish and then set the black wallpaper on the device.
Open URLs in Google Chrome for iOS instead of Mobile Safari
Mobile Safari was pretty much universally thought of as the best browser for iOS devices, and managed to fight off a lot of competition on the App Store. The arrival of Google Chrome for iOS in June of last year brought serious competition for Apple’s native web browser, and also saw a lot of users jumping ship. One of the only issues is that Apple doesn’t actually allow users to pick and choose the default browser to open clicked links in. Check out our how-to tutorial on making hyperlinks invoke Google Chrome rather than Safari.
Putting folders within folders
Apps holding folders were a godsend when introduced as part of iOS 4 in 2010. The ability to place apps in their own folders and keep things organized was greatly received, but what about those who want to place already created folders within another folder? Well, for those who aren’t jailbroken, it is possible to do that. Our original post covers the method to be able to do this as well as some rather important caveats of doing so.
Creating blank icons on the Home Screen
Jailbreaking is extremely popular within those individuals who want to change the way their device looks. Changing the stock graphics and interface elements through the installation of themes has also been popular and continues to be so. This tweaks enables users to change the location and setup of app icons by creating blank spaces on the Home Screen. The process is actually quite clever and delivers fairly good results, all of which is outlined in our original tutorial on the subject.
Display local weather information on the Lock Screen
Weather apps are rife on the App Store, but they don’t offer the same practicality of the software we can find on Cydia. Weather widgets for jailbroken devices have allowed us to pretty much call up the environmental information from anywhere on the device. Those who are sans jailbreak can take advantage of the Lock Screen Weather application on the App Store that bends the rules of the Human Interface Guidelines by taking advantage of the music player on the device. There’s always a way around things, it just takes a bit of intelligent thinking.
Hiding stock apps from view
The majority of iOS users are perfectly happy to relocate the stock apps that they don’t use into a folder, and banish them to obscurity on a different Home Screen. However, some just cant abide them being on the device. Sometimes it’s because they can be unsightly. Sometimes it’s because they just don’t want Apple dictating to them what has to be on the phone. Thankfully it is actually possible to go through a relatively simple process of hiding specific stock apps.
Make AirPlay work with almost any installed app
Remember when Apple introduced AirPlay? It often gets overlooked, but definitely still remains one of the best inclusions we have seen to date. Unfortunately, not every app is AirPlay enabled. From an internal aspect, the developer of an app has access to a simple Boolean value that allows AirPlay to be turned on or off in their app. This handy but extremely simple process allows us to enable AirPlay for pretty much any app.
Bring SBSettings-like shortcuts to the iPhone Home Screen
Jailbreaking is extremely popular for a number of reasons, but one of the most consistently popular packages from Cydia has to be SBSettings. The ability to access commonly used system settings and information from a simple modal drop down is extremely important. Although we can’t directly replicate that functionality on a non-jailbroken device, we can at least get to the relevant area of the Settings app through a single tap. The Icon Project app from the App Store brings us some joy, but check out our original post for full examples of usage.
Free up space on the iPhone or iPad by cleaning up caches and temporary files
Internal storage space is arguably one of the most vital aspects of any smartphone or intelligent consumer electronics device. It can sometimes be difficult to manage that storage effectively and keep room on the phone for all of the files and media that we need. Thankfully, it is possible to use a rather handy piece of Windows software called PhoneClean to get access to specific locations of the device that we wouldn’t have previously been able to alter.PhoneClean allows us to free up space by deleting temporary files and removing junk logs and caches.
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