It wasn’t too long ago that we showed you a jailbreak tweak called Oneko that added a pet cat to your iPhone’s screen that would follow every tap you made in virtually any interface.
Building off the popularity of these types of virtual pet-style experiences, iOS developer pixelomer has just released a new jailbreak tweak called Shijima (Shimeji for iOS) that brings desktop pets to the iOS & iPadOS platforms.
Shijima pets are totally interactive, meaning you can do things with them and watch them respond to your actions. Among the things you can expect to do with them are:
- Throw them around
- Give them cookies
- Tap and hold on them so they can’t go anywhere
- And more…
As time goes on, the Shijima may multiply, giving you more pets to look after.
The developer has shared the following trailer video for Shijima, showcasing how it looks and how it works:
Shimeji desktop pets are particularly popular on the Internet, and the Shijima jailbreak tweak lets you use almost any of them on your iPhone or iPad. You can download .zip, .rar, and .7z archives and import them into Shijima to use them. This also means that the library of shimeji that you can install from is seemingly endless.
A small list of recommended Shimeji are provided as recommendations in the Shijima app, but you can certainly search the internet for more.
You can, of course, control where and when Shijima mascots appear, whether you prefer for them to appear in certain apps, all apps, or no apps at all; this also applies to the Home Screen. You can also spawn, de-spawn, and install or remove Shijima mascots without respringing your device. Options can be configured by the end user in the Shijima app:
Among the different things you can do in the app are:
- View and manage installed Shimeji mascots
- Kill all (or all but one) Shimeji mascots
- Toggle Shimeji multiplication on or off
- Only allow Shimeji in specific apps and choose which apps those will be
- Toggle Shimeji on the Home Screen on or off
- Reset settings to defaults
- Delete all installed Shimeji
- And more…
At this point, Shijima supports jailbroken iOS & iPadOS 14, 15, 16, and 17 devices and is available for $4.99 from the Havoc repository via your favorite package manager app. Shijima doesn’t add a preference pane in the Settings app, but does put a new icon on your Home Screen where you can configure the tweak to your liking.
Will you be making use of Shijima? Let us know why or why not in the comments section down below.