Install Icy on your Jailbroken iPhone
When I first jailbroke my first gen iPhone, the source for 3rd party
apps was through Installer (also known as AppTapp). Now, as I’ve moved on to the iPhone 3G, Installer has taken a backseat to Cydia, which has emerged as the only place to download apps.
Cydia is great but it does have some shortfalls. For example, it takes a LONG time to load (I’m beginning to think “Reloading Data” will soon be a permanent imprint on my iPhone’s screen!) at times, and when repositories are down Cydia can just stop functioning altogether. Installing and uninstalling applications can be a multi-step process that is time consuming.
Enter Stage Left: Please Welcome Icy Into Your Life
The folks that gave us the original Installer have recently introduced Icy, which essentially is Cydia but about 100x easier to use. Icy is RipDev’s take on Cydia, and their little app makes using Cydia a BREEZE! Good bye long wait times, welcome to the future of installing/removing 3rd party apps!
How to Install Icy on your Jailbroken iPhone
1. Launch Cydia. Go to Manage–>Sources–>Edit–>Add
2. Enter the following: http://apt.ripdev.com …hit Add Source afterwards.
3. Go to Sections–>Packaging–>select Icy, and install it.
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4. After the install, respring and launch Icy.
Upon launching Icy, you should see a very simple layout. Categories, Sources, and Installed are your choices along the bottom (and Search in the top right corner). Go ahead and select any app to install it. You’ll soon be amazed at how well Icy works at installing a program. Try uninstalling an app and it’s equally as easy.
You can also view Icy in landscape mode. What makes Icy so quick is that sources are only refreshed when you want them to be. The app takes up minimal resources and downloads repos very quickly.
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Check out the following screenshots of my installation of the CTU ringtone from 24:
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…and here are some screenshots of me deleting xGPS
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Icy is an awesome alternative to Cydia when you need to install/remove apps quickly and painlessly without constantly waiting for sources to refresh. Definitely give it a try and let me know what you think of it!
Categories App Helps Organize iPhone Apps on your iPhone's Home Screen
Categories App Helps Organize iPhone Apps on your iPhone's Home Screen
Though I had published an easier method to rearrange the iPhone Apps across multiple screens, 5 or more screens of iPhone apps is still quite unmanageable.
That's where Categories iPhone app developed by Big Boss for the jailbroken iPhone comes in very handy.
As the name suggests it allows you to create categories in the form of folders so that you can move the iPhone apps into them to reduce the number of home screens.
It also helps in organizing your iPhone apps so that they are more easily accessible.
iPhone users use various methods to organize their growing list of iPhone apps on their home screen, one of them is to arrange iPhone apps that fall under the same category on the same home screen page.
The Categories App simplifies the organization of iPhone apps on the home screen using folders. I have been able to reduce the home screens from 5 to only 2 using the Categories App.
Here is a walk-through on how to use the Categories iPhone app to organize your iPhone apps on the home screen.
You can install Categories app via Cydia on your jailbroken iPhone. Once installed, launch it from your iPhone's home screen.
When you launch the App, you will be prompted with a blank screen where you can create folders for each of the categories you want to organize the iPhone apps.
Tapping on "Add" on the top right corner will pop-up the screen where you can enter the Category Title (avoid using the name of any of the apps as the category title as the iPhone app will not show up for selection). It will then prompt you to assign an icon to the category. You can select an icon from a wide variety of icon collection as seen below.
You can see the categories that have been created along with their icons in the screen shot below:
To assign a Category to iPhone apps, just tap the Category Name, you will see an empty screen with an Add button on the top right corner. Tap the Add button, it will display the list of iPhone apps installed on your iPhone as seen below:
Now tapping on the iPhone app will assign the iPhone app to the respective Category.
You can follow the above steps to organize all the iPhone apps (other than your most frequently used apps) on your iPhone's home screen.
You can also have an iPhone app in multiple categories. If you want to move an iPhone app icon from one of the Categories back to the home screen, simply delete it from the respective Categories folders using Categories app User Interface.
To delete a category, just tap "Edit" and then select the category to delete. However, categories must be empty in order to be deleted. Therefore, you must first delete the apps out of the category before you can delete the category.
As you can see the user interface is quite simple and you should be able to reduce the number of home screen pages in a matter of minutes with the Categories app.
The Categories app seems to have been around for quite a while so it will great if you can share your feedback on this application if you have used it before in the comments below for the benefit of fellow readers.
Update:
The Categories app's disclaimer states to "be very careful", and to "remove all apps from folders and uninstall before updating" to the latest firmware update.
iPhone users who have not done this are facing issues as the apps that were moved to the folders are no longer visible after the update.
Top 10 iPhone Cydia Applications (2008)
It’s only one year before (2008) comes to an end. I’m hopping on the bandwagon to select my top-10 iPhone applications of 2008. But they’re from Cydia, not App Store application!
Since the debut of iPhone App Store in early July, the number of iPhone applications is increasing dramatically. The online store is now hosting more than 10,000 applications for download. That’s really awesome!
But as a jailbreak iPhone user, you shouldn’t forget other third party applications available on Cydia. 99% of the applications put on Cydia are available at no cost. I’d like to take this opportunity to thanks all developers for putting up so many great applications that enrich my iPhone life. And, here comes to my top 10 Cydia applications:
1. Cydia – I will say Cydia is the heart of jailbroken iPhone (as well as iPod Touch). A big thanks to Cydia’s creator, Jay Freeman. Cydia enables you to download third party iPhone applications that you probably can’t find in iPhone’s App Store.
2. Winterboard – Again, thanks for Jay Freeman to bring us this application. Winterboard is the theme manager of iPhone. You can use it to skin the iPhone with awesome icon sets, keyboard, SMS bubbles, etc. It can really make your iPhone stand out from others.
3. Cycorder – Oh! It’s Jay Freeman again. Cycorder turns your iPhone camera into video recorder. You can capture video using iPhone’s camera. It’s simply awesome.
4. Netatalk – If you’re Mac user, this would be a great application. In technical term, Netatalk is an open source implementation of AppleTalk networking protocol. With Netatalk installed on iPhone, you can connect to iPhone from your Mac and transfer files between each other wirelessly. iPhone will appear as a networked drive in Mac’s Finder. So, transferring file is just a matter of drag & drop.
5. OpenSSH – OpenSSH is a suite of networking tools for establishing secure network
connection. The implementation of OpenSSH on iPhone powers you to connect to iPhone and gain access to the file system remotely. You can also use OpenSSH to transfer ringtones or photos between the device and computer remotely. This application is not designed for jailbroken iPhone beginner. You’ll have to familiar yourself with OpenSSH first.
6. SBSettings – A full replacement of BossPrefs and it brings all important toggles (which may be hidden under Settings) directly into your iPhone Home Screen. With SBSettings, you can directly control brightness and toggle WiFi / EDGE / Bluetooth at home screen or while you’re using other applications. That’s really great for me as I used to turn off WiFi for battery saving.
7. MySMS – A replacement of iPhone’s default SMS application. MySMS lets you type SMS in landscape mode and forward SMS to other recipients. It also enables iPhone to send or receive encrypted SMS. If you’re a frequent user of SMS, MySMS is a great application to put it on iPhone.
8. Snapture – A replacement of iPhone’s default Camera application. With Snapture, you can turn iPhone camera into an advanced digital camera that extends the possibilities of iPhone photography. Snapture lets you shoot black/white photos and in burst mode. It also features a timer, digital zoom and silent mode.
9. Podcaster – This application lets you download and stream all your favourite postcast directly into iPhone.
10. CallMe – CallMe brings speed dial to iPhone at no cost. You can easily add your favourite contact on iPhone home screen as a dial icon.
bossPrefs - iPhone 2G,3G,3GS Apps
Download From Cydia.
To run any Cydia applications or games on your iPhone or iTouch, you must be jailbroken first.
Search "bossPrefs" in Cydia
From the developer’s site: “This native iPhone app is an offshoot of “Services” by Chris Hoffman. The app expands on services by adding some more options and focusing on being a complete preferences replacement. After installing BossPrefs you should be able to remove Customize, SMBPrefs, and Settings icons from your desktop.”
If you don't have this app yet, the go get it!!Let me tell you this is the first tool that i install on a jailbroken touch or iPhone. Boss Prefs makes it easy to get all the info you need with a touch of a couple of buttons. Let me explain in more detail.
Main Screen
Here you have all your toggles,additional toggle buttons can be downloaded from cydia. From this screen you can quickly toggle your 3g, edge, wifi, bluetooth, ssh, etc. Not only that it will also provide the ip of edge, 3g, and wifi right here on the same screen.
Here is the configuration menu which you can customize the visual look of your main screen.
This is the MORE Section located on the top right corner of the main screen.
Here you have the following Settings:
Dock Icons: Allows you to add icons to your boss prefs system tray.
Fix User Dir Permissions: Quick fix for symptoms such as Mail app crashing, summerboard themes not working, notes not savings and other permission issues.
BossPrefs to Double Tap Home: Allows you to launch BossPrefs by double tapping the home key(round key)
Show Free Disk Space: Shows the total space in use on your phone.
Enable numeric Battery: One of my Favs, shows your battery level in a 0-100 percent meter.
Disable Apple App Kill switch: If apple dislikes an app(for whatever reason), they can remove it from your device using a kill switch function.
Hide Icons - Self Explanatory
Power Manage
enjoy cydia apps.....
Best iPhone 2G,3G,3GS video recorder - CYCORDER (FREE)
download from Cydia.
To run any Cydia applications or games on your iPhone or iTouch, you must be jailbroken first.
Search "Cycorder" in Cydia
Ok so we've seen many video recorders popping out on the market, we've tried alot of them including iphonevideorecorder, but they all suck, either they are slow, video resolution is crappy or a combination of both. This morning while browsing through cydia like always, we came across the new video recorder from CYCORDER.
We were very happy with the results from this product. I know there are alot of people out there who use the camera on the iphone as a digi cam to snap those pictures of crazy stuff that happens when all you have is the Iphone on you. Well now you can make snazzy videos of interesting stuff while you are on the road.
The CYCORDER video recorder is free and runs on ad promotions in a little top bar of the phone. Yea that might not be great but the price is, FREE. The recorder saves all its files in quicktime uncompressed, what does this mean to you? Well it means files will be big, 30 second video is 12Megabytes. So your 8 Gig Iphone can record for about 5 and a half hours straight !!! No conversion is great because you dont have to wait for the phone to encode the video after you are done, just click stop and start recording another video, simple as that. Why would you want your Iphone to do encoding when you can do it 10 times faster on your pc at home.
Only feature that the applicatoin seems to lack is the ability to share your video's easily and the lack of audio. As of right now you have to SSH into the phone and copy the files out from /var/mobile/Media/Videos folder. Still its the first version, and the video quality is simply amazing.
We took a sample video in the car this morning and it came out fantastic compared to all the other video software out there. Our question is why hasn't apple released something like this in the APPSTORE, obviously the phone can handle it.
Once again Amazing product and can't wait for new updates.
Great job goes to the developers.
