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New to Mac? How to set up and use the Messages app

How to use Messages on Mac

There are some things to get used to if you’re a new Mac user, especially if you’re switching from Windows. From the different labels and locations for items to how to use the Dock to your advantage, we try to cover it all for those new to macOS on iDB.

As another how-to in our series, we’re going to walk through how to set up and use the built-in Messages app on Mac.

Augment your jailbroken iPhone’s dual-SIM capabilities with eSIM+

Apple’s latest iPhones, from the iPhone XR to the iPhone 13 lineup, support dual-SIM functionality. Straight out of the box, these handsets can have both a physical SIM-based carrier and an eSIM-based carrier configured on the same device for traveling abroad. But perhaps unsurprisingly, the native implementation of this capability on the iOS platform leaves a lot to be desired.

Here to help with this particularly disgruntling issue is a newly-released jailbreak tweak called eSIM+ by iOS developer iArrays. Just as the name implies, this tweak augments any jailbroken iPhone that supports dual-SIM capabilities, such as those mentioned earlier.

Center-align all application titles in iOS with CenteredLargeTitles

iOS 11 and 12 introduced a lot of changes over iOS 10, but in the aesthetics department, the large emboldened titles that appear in certain apps really tend to stick out.

The emboldened titles don’t look terribly horrendous, but one of the most common complaints that we see regarding them is Apple’s choice to left-align the text. Given the circumstances, iOS developer level3tjg came up with a free jailbreak tweak called CenteredLargeTitles to resolve this debacle for the picky ones.

Easily customize the style of your texts and more with Textyle

While perusing the Changes tab in Cydia this week, I happened upon a particularly interesting new jailbreak tweak called Textyle by iOS developer Deniz Basegmez. Upon closer inspection, it looks like something that large sum of jailbreakers might want to try for themselves.

As shown in the screenshot example above, Textyle integrates with iOS’ native Action Menu interface, which materializes after selecting any string of text. When it appears, you can modify the selected text’s aesthetics with different types of Unicode-based fonts and styles.

Customize your Lock screen’s text font with Lafon

If you have a jailbroken iPhone or iPad and you haven’t customized it with third-party fonts yet, then you’re missing out. On the other hand, popular classics like BytaFont tend to take things a bit too far for minimalists, adjusting the handset’s font on a system-wide level.

Those who demand a subtler footprint in the name of font customization will take a liking to a new free jailbreak tweak called Lafon by iOS developer Aesthyrica, as it only impacts the font of the text strings that appear on your Lock screen.

This tweak changes the Emoji keyboard’s scrubber animation

If you do a lot of texting from your iOS device(s), then chances are you send an Emoji every now and again. Apple’s Emoji keyboard is already nicely polished out of the box, but now you can make it even cooler with a custom animation by way of a new free jailbreak tweak called Organic Emoji Scrubber by iOS developer Orangebananaspy.

According to the developer, the new tweak adds an “organic” animation to the Emoji scrubber in the keyboard interface. Rather than attempting to explain what the amination looks like with words, we’ve embedded some animated GIF examples below so that you can see for yourself:

CopyLog: A full-fledged Clipboard manager for jailbroken iOS devices

CopyLog clipboard manager for jailbroken devices.

Whenever you copy or cut something on your iPhone or iPad, it gets stored in what’s called the Clipboard such that it can be pasted elsewhere in the future. By default, iOS only lets you store one item in the Clipboard at a time, but a new Clipboard manager jailbreak tweak called CopyLog by iOS developer TomT000 changes this to make copying and pasting several items so much easier.

Citing the developer, CopyLog’s user interface has been hugely inspired by the popular Mac app Paste, and enables you to keep track of numerous Clipboard items. What’s more is CopyLog lets you favorite certain Clipboard items, which helps you save them for easy access later.