Music

TinyWidget14 puts the Lock Screen’s Now Playing widget on a diet

Anthony Bouchard ∙ February 23, 2021

Most iPhone users are familiar with the Now Playing widget. It’s the thing that pops on your Lock Screen whenever you have any type of media playing in the background.

While it’s useful for granular playback controls, the Now Playing widget certainly takes up a lot of vertical screen real estate on the Lock Screen, which severely limits available space for missed notification banners. Fortunately, a new and free jailbreak tweak dubbed TinyWidget14 by iOS developer P2KDev puts the Now Playing widget on a diet.

Read More

MusicGesture upgrades the Now Playing interface with gestures & full-screen artwork

Anthony Bouchard ∙ February 2, 2021

It’s no secret that in addition to being a venerable smartphone, the iPhone is still one of the world’s best portable music players. Still, that doesn’t give Apple a free pass for the somewhat stagnant music interface experience that we’ve all been using for the past several years.

Those in the market for an augmented Now Playing user experience might be interested in picking up a newly released jailbreak tweak called MusicGesture by iOS developer Antony_M. This tweak not only provides jailbreakers with a new way to interact with the Now Playing media controls, but it also allows for configuration of the Now Playing interface in ways that Apple would never permit on a stock handset.

Read More

Juin brings the Spotify app’s Now Playing interface to the Lock Screen

Anthony Bouchard ∙ December 21, 2020

Spotify is one of the most popular music streaming services on the iPhone besides Apple Music, and it’s easy to see why. Not only does Spotify offer a compelling music database to choose from, but it even pre-dated Apple Music to become one of the most successful music streaming services on the iOS platform and was one of the first music streaming apps to sport a dark app interface that went along nicely with iOS 13’s Dark Mode feature.

Another thing that stands out to a lot of Spotify app users is the Now Playing interface, which features a large central play and pause button and a beautiful full-screen album artwork display. Spotify’s Now Playing interface is unique to the Spotify Music app itself, but with the help of a new and free jailbreak tweak dubbed Juin by iOS developer Litten, you can now go ahead and enjoy it on the Lock Screen too.

Read More