How jailbreaking made my iOS experience much Better!

“What can you do with a jailbroken iDevice? And What is the point of jailbreaking?” are two of the most common questions I have been asked so many times, and to tell you guys honestly there are no short and simple answers. AS a result, here I am writing a long post to address those two questions by sharing the tweaks that I have and explain them to you guys how jailbreaking makes my iOS experience way much better, and I’m hoping that my fellow jailbreakers would do the same thing on the comment.

Activator: Personally, this is the best jailbreak tweak ever.

Actually, this tweak itself deserves a post by itself because there are tons of modifications you can do with it. However, I’m going to share to you guys some of the cool stuffs I have managed to do with it. You can also listen to a podcast demonstration that I made for Activator on this link. Activator The Must have jailbreak Tweak

Blind Square+ with Activator

I take trains 4 days a week. I live in Chicago, so trains here are always running on schedule. With the combination of another tweak, called Activate Link, Blind Square URL scheme and Activator, I have created a schedule, on specific days of the week that will launch Blind Square and track my station 5 minutes before my stop. Due to my long train commute, this automation is very useful for me; not only alerting me for my stop, it’s also providing me of my location, especially when the train is running late. I also have this set up to track the stairs on the train platform. I love this set up so much; It gives me the freedom to do things on my phone without the fear of missing my stop; It saves me some battery too because I don’t have to run Blind Square all the time.

In my work place, we are not allowed to use our phones, so I always put my phone on Airplane mode when I’m working.

Again, I have created a schedule for this one too, so I don’t have to worry about it and just have Activator to do the job for me. I use my headphone all the time at work, so when I’m done working, and I plug my headphone jack in, it will automatically turn the Airplane mode off and set the volume to 70%.

Notification Events

Don’t you hate when you are trying to charge your device, and next thing you know it got unplugged? I do, so I created an Activator set up that will make my device say something like, “Hee Hee Hee. That tickles” when I plug it in and “Ha ha Ha. You got unplugged” when I got disconnected from the charger. I also created something to announce my battery percentage when it becomes 100, 75, 50 and 25; It’s nice to have an alert how much battery you still have while you’re using your device.

The last setup for Activator that I want to share is pre-programming things you want to say to Siri.

I have created a Siri’ menu that contains all the phrases I want to tell her such as “What is the name of the song playing?” (Very handy in a noisy environment) and “Speak the screen,” Handy if I want to share something to my fiance to a speech rate that she could understand. I better stop with Activator because I could go on and on about it! I actually consider myself as “Activator Ninja!” LOL!

Activator/FlipSwitch Add-on

Activate Link: This is what I use to automate Blind Square

. Description: Activate Link is a simple tweak that lets you open URLs using Activator events. Activate Link supports Web URLs as well as System URL Schemes. This tweak lets you set up to five URLs that can be opened with Activator events such as tapping the status bar, double tapping the sleep button or triple tapping the home button. Examples of things you can do are: - Open a favorite web page in safari. - Get maps to take you to a favorite location (e.g. http://maps.apple.com/?q=1060+West+Addison,Chicago for apple maps or comgooglemaps://?daddr=10+Downing+Street,London for google maps). - Open a favorite TV show in imdb (e.g. imdb:///title/tt0944947/). - Compose a tweet in your preferred Twitter client that supports URL schemes. No icon is added to the home screen. Configuration is performed in the Settings app.

Keyboard FlipSwitch

This allows you to use an Activator gesture to toggle the switches inside the Setting>General>Keyboard. For your guys information, I am a Filipino who migrated to America. I love to use the Auto Correction of iOS when I’m chatting with my American friends, but I hate it when I’m chatting with my Filipino friends; It’s pain in the butt to go inside the keyboard setting just to toggle it. However, this is no longer the case because now I can just double tap on the right part of my status bar, and it will toggle it on or off.

LastApp

This allows you to switch back and fourth to the previous app you had opened.

Self-explanatory Add-on

VoiceOver FlipSwitch SafeMode FlipSwitch Reboot FlipSwitch

iFile

This allows me to browse, move or modify the iOS file system. You can even browse, download and upload files to Box/DropBox once you link your account. Basically, it’s a Finder for iOS.

Bridge

This enables you to import ringtones, Videos and music to the native iOS app.

VibeTime

This tell you the time using Vibrations pattern. You simply set up the gesture on Activator to trigger the vibration. For 2$, this is no brainer to buy compare with the pocket watch that vibrates the time that cost over 100$.

Flex

This lets you modify iOS and third party apps. I use this to have the banner notification to stick on the status bar, change Siri speech rate, enable to rewind iTunes Radio, enable unlimited Skips and no Ads for iHeartRadio and iTunes Radio and so much more. You guys have to explore this one. There are plenty of things you can do with it, especially if you know some programming.

iTouchSecure

This lets me use the Touch ID to log in to my account even the apps don’t support it yet.

VirtualHome

This enables you to use the Touch ID sensor as your home button.

TypeStatus

regardless what part of iOS you are at,This enables VoiceOver to announce when your iMessage has been read if they have the read receipt enable. It also announce the Typing indicator.

NoLongPress

This disables the additional character when you hold the letter on the keyboard.

NoUpdateHistory

This removes the update history on the AppStore.

OneThumb

This allows you to have an Activator gestures to thumbs up or down on a song. This support Pandora, Spodify, iTunesRadio and more.. The way I set up mine is when I hold the volume up and down.

UntrustedHostBlocker

In my opinion, This is the most effective way to block ads. However, you may encounter sometimes that some pages are not loading up properly, but you can solve that by turning off UntrustedHostBlocker. In order for you to have that capability, you have to install HostFile FlipSwitch. UHB is not on the default repos. You have to add this source; http://repo.thireus .com

Slide2Kill Pro

This enable you to kill all the apps on the appSwitcher in different ways. I have mine set up to double tap and hold an icon inside the AppSwitcher.

SafeAlarm Pro

This enable you to have more customization how your alarms work. For example, I have changed my Snooze duration to 30 min. instead of the default, which is 9.

UnlockSound7

This brings back the unlock sound effect back in iOS 6.

Enclosing

I have probably shared to you guys 50% of customizations that I do on my jailbroken device. There are some more advance stuffs, but I don’t think that I have to go to that extent. Besides, This post is becoming a novel already! LOL! Seriously, I hope that this post answered those two most common question on my introduction. To my fellow jailbreaker, share your Activator set up and jailbreak experience too in the comment.