You may have heard of the terms backgrounded and foregrounded apps before, which essentially refer to apps that run in the background while you do things in other apps and interfaces, or apps that run in the foreground as the front-and-center user interface that you’re actively using.
Since some apps can only perform certain tasks while running in the foreground, iOS developer sergy has released a new and free jailbreak tweak called Immortalizer that can force apps to handle those kinds of tasks in the background and offers a ton of user-friendly features to support your workflow.
In a post shared to /r/jailbreak Wednesday evening, sergy said that Immortalizer is inspired by the bakgrunnur jailbreak tweak that we showed you back in 2020, which hasn’t been updated since iOS 15. The developer wanted a modern replacement with support for indicators and that works properly when the deivce is locked.
Sergy is new to jailbreak tweak development and spent more than a month trying to learn the ins and outs of it. After dedicating almost 18 hours a day for two weeks straight on this project, it’s finally complete enough for a public release and has been open sourced on GitHub for more folks to try and learn from.
Getting back to what you can do with Immortalizer, we think it’s important to note that you can invoke the tweak for any app on your device by using a 3D Touch/Haptic Touch gesture on the app’s icon from the Home Screen and tapping on the Enable Immortal Foreground option. Upon doing so, an hourglass icon appears next to the name of the app to indicate that immortal mode has been turned on for it.
While turned on, immortal mode allows apps to continue performing processes, even after you leave the app. The app must remain backgrounded, so you can’t forcefully close it from the App Switcher and expect processes to continue smoothly. This is something to keep in mind.
As you use Immortalizer, you will also get toast-style banner notifications that let you know when an app has become immortalized, when it’s at rest, and when the app has been terminated. Upon termination, another type of indicator appears by the app icon’s name on the Home Screen – a yellow dot.
Once installed, users will find a dedicated preference pane in the Settings app for Immortalizer where a myriad of options can be configured:
Things you can do here include:
- Toggling Immortalizer on or off on demand
- Enabling foreground notifications on a per-app basis
- Toggling hourglass and termination indicators on or off on demand
- Toggling toast message notifications on or off on demand
- And more…
If you ever find yourself using apps that you wish could continue performing processes in the background even when they weren’t front-and-center on your screen, then the Immortalizer jailbreak tweak could be your next best friend.
Immortalizer is available for free from the Havoc repository via your favorite package manager app and supports jailbroken devices running iOS & iPadOS 14, 15, and 16, including rootless jailbreaks.
Do you plan to take advantage of Immortalizer? Tell us why or why not in the comments section down below, and if so, let us know how as well.