Tweak

5 excellent jailbreak tweaks to improve search on iOS

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 10, 2018

Searching is something we do day in and day out. It's an integral part of the desktop experience, so it only makes sense that it's something we do often on mobile devices as well.

Searching on the iPhone, while adequate, has always left a little something to be desired when compared to competing operating systems like Android. It only makes sense, considering Android is the product of Google — the creator of the world's best and most popular search engine.

If you're jailbroken, however, you have many more choices when it comes to search on iOS. There are search improvements for Spotlight, voice search enhancements, Notification Center search options, and much, much, more. Jailbreaking is a great way to get more out of your device, and that's why we've taken the liberty to compile a list highlighting some of the best jailbreak tweaks for search...

Universal Video Downloader allows you to extract video from outside apps

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 10, 2018

Universal Video Downloader is a jailbreak tweak that allows you to extract video from any app. It's a tweak that makes it totally feasible to download an iTunes trailer, or other video content for offline use.

Obviously, as with any app of this nature, it is possible to use it for more unscrupulous means, but as we always do at iDB, we urge you to use the app like it was intended to be used — for legitimate purposes. Want to see how it works? Take a look inside as we take Universal Video Downloader for a spin.

ActiSearch uses Activator gestures to search Cydia, Facebook, YouTube, and more

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

ActiSearch is a new jailbreak tweak that uses Activator Gestures as a means to invoke searches to some of your favorite websites and social platforms. You can choose to configure a single site to a single Activator gesture, or configure multiple activator gestures with multiple sites.

ActiSearch, as you may have guessed, is a simple to use jailbreak tweak that makes it easy to find what you're looking for if your desired site is included among the supported list of sites. Take a look at our video walkthrough for the details.

CallBar v2 brings iOS 6 support and other new features to our favorite Phone app tweak

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 10, 2018

CallBar v2 is now available on Cydia's BigBoss repo, and it brings iOS 6 support and a host of additional new features to the popular telephony tweak for jailbroken iPhones. One thing I noticed by looking at the change log, and from using CallBar v2, is that it is a very refined experience. Elias Limneos and Joshua Tucker spent a lot of time stamping out bugs present in previous versions, and it shows.

While fixes are nice, new and improved features are even better, and CallBar v2 benefits from a number of them. First of all, there's true iOS 6 support built right in. I was able to test CallBar v2 on both an iOS 6.x and iOS 5.x device, and they both worked pretty much identical to one another.

For those of you who still may feel a little reluctant to upgrade to iOS 6, you'll no doubt appreciate how CallBar v2 brings many of the iOS 6 phone features to iOS 5.x. Options that are normally only available on the latest firmware like "Reply with Messsage" and "Remind me Later", are now available on iOS 5, and they work exactly as you would expect.

As we normally tend to do, we've created a video walkthrough that showcases some of the new features present in CallBar v2. We invite you inside to take a look at our video, along with more details concerning the new upgrade...

How to add Facebook, Twitter, and more search options to Spotlight

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 10, 2018

The awkwardly named SLightEnhancerSearch, is a recently released jailbreak tweak that adds a ton of new search options to the stock Spotlight search on iOS. When it was first released, I ran into many issues with the tweak, namely, the search options not showing up on the Spotlight page when enabled.

The tweak was updated today, and the developer seems to have stamped out all of the bugs that plagued the initial release. SLightEnhancerSearch, as silly as its name may be, is a quality jailbreak tweak that many will no doubt find useful...

How to disable Cover Flow in the Music app with NoCoverFlow

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 10, 2018

Cover Flow is a nice feature, but that's more due to its visual appeal than actual functionality is concerned. If you hate Cover Flow, then you'll be happy to know that it can be easily disabled by means of this new jailbreak tweak.

NoCoverFlow is a tweak from jailbreak developer, Ryan Petrich. With a quick installation, it will easily rid your stock Music app of Cover Flow if you so desire to do so. Take a look at our video walkthrough inside to see NoCoverFlow in action.

Battery Status provides spoken and pop-up battery alerts

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 10, 2018

Battery Status is a jailbreak tweak that will keep you informed about the status of your iOS device's battery. Battery Status provides either a spoken or pop-up alert, or a combination of the two — with both outlaying your current battery life situation.

This $0.99 tweak will tell you how much battery life you have remaining, how much you need to get to 100%, and how long it will take you to get to a fully charged battery. Take a look at our video walkthrough inside for a full synopsis of how it works.

Dial allows you to dial and text friends from a variety of places

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 14, 2018

Dial is a brand new tweak that allows you to use a dialer to text or call your friends and family from the App Switcher, Siri interface, or from Spotlight. The tweak has options to outright replace both Siri and the App Switcher, or to be invoked in tandem with the two.

In principal this might sound like a good idea. Wait a minute...let's not kid ourselves, it sounds like a terrible idea, but I was hoping that the execution would surprise me and change my mind. It didn't. Even still, there may be some of you out there who will appreciate Dial for what it is. With that in mind, we've created a video walkthrough showing how the tweak works.

WebOffline for Chrome brings offline web page reading to Google’s iOS browser

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 11, 2018

WebOffline for Chrome is a new jailbreak tweak that integrates offline reading capability directly into the Google Chrome browser for iOS. As someone who does a lot of offline reading, and as someone who's a huge Google Chrome proponent, this sounded like the perfect tweak for me. Sadly, the tweak falls short due to its bugs.

As you'll see in our hands-on video, WebOffline for Chrome has tons of potential, but unfortunately it needs a few more hours in the oven before it's really ready for primetime.

Accelerate significantly speeds up iOS animations

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 10, 2018

Are your finding the iOS experience to be a bit on the slow side? Are you using an older iOS device, and finding it to be unbearably sluggish? If you're jailbroken, and this has been your experience, then you might want to give this new tweak a go.

Accelerate is a recently released jailbreak tweak that speeds up the animations within iOS. While it's technically not making the experience any faster, the perceived speed increase may go a long way towards curing your blues.

Take a gander at our video inside for a demonstration that shows how it works.

InstaSafe can quickly boot your iPhone into safe mode

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 10, 2018

If you need to quickly boot your iDevice into safe mode, there are quite a few options available on Cydia in order to do so. One of the latest tweaks available via Cydia is InstaSafe, which places a dedicated safe mode button conveniently on the SpringBoard.

Take a look inside as we show you how InstaSafe works in this video demonstration...

NoNewApp removes “new” badging from newly installed apps

Jeff Benjamin ∙ Updated April 14, 2018

Do you find yourself hating the "new" badge that appears on newly installed apps from the App Store? I must admit, that even if I have no intentions of using a newly downloaded app right away, I'll at least open it once to rid it of that ugly badge.

If you happen to jailbroken, there's an even easier way to get rid of the eyesore, and it's called NoNewApp. NoNewApp is a recently released jailbreak tweak that prevents the "new" badge from appearing on newly downloaded apps.

Want to see how it works? Take a look inside for our full video walkthrough...