One of my biggest qualms with the Lock Screen on any iPhone or iPad is the fact that the number pad for passcode entry always has the same layout. This means that even if someone who’s glancing over your shoulder doesn’t know exactly what numbers you’re tapping on, they can instead easily memorize the positions of the number buttons you tap on to gain access to your device.
Rode is a free jailbreak tweak by iOS developer rootfs that addresses this problem head-on, and it does so by scrambling the positions of the passcode screen’s number keys to random positions every time you unlock your device so that the passcode buttons’ positions can’t be memorized to unlock your device.
As depicted in the screenshot examples above, Rode ensures that your Lock Screen’s passcode buttons never appear in the same place twice in a row. This means that even if an attacker memorizes the keys you’ve tapped on, they will be unsuccessful trying to replicate it because they’ll be tapping on different passcode numbers than you did.
This is a tweak that we think should be standard feature on any iPhone or iPad, and it’s already used on other systems to help ensure better device security. In fact, the concept isn’t even new to the jailbreak community; a tweak called CodeScrambler 12 that I shared a post about back in 2019 did the exact same thing, while Rode brings this functionality to newer jailbroken iterations of iOS and iPadOS.
Rode doesn’t come with any options to configure, and frankly, that’s okay. This tweak doesn’t need any settings because it serves a single purpose and does it rather well. By scrambling the passcode buttons’ positions, your device’s security goes up substantially, helping to thwart one of the most simplistic attacks of all: snooping over your shoulder as you enter your passcode to figure it out.
Those interested in giving the Rode jailbreak tweak a try can download it for free from the Havoc repository via their favorite package manager app. The tweak supports jailbroken devices running iOS or iPadOS 10-18, which is pretty much every modern jailbreak in recent memory from rootful to rootless.
Will you be taking advantage of Rode? Let us know why or why not in the comments section down below.