The third party application store, Cydia, has achieved phenomenal success in the relatively short time it has been existence. Obviously, the success of any sales platform is predominantly down to these consumers who use it day in and day out, without those people who require additional tweaks and utilities on their devices, it simply wouldn’t exist.
So just what do you look for when you launch Cydia on your iDevice and browse through the content? Some experienced users have a number of developers they follow, and will always purchase or download their software, others have a list of essential tweaks which they always install direct from the manage account section, and some browse through the categories and changes section freely, looking for something awesome to enhance their device.
Whatever type of Cydia user you may be, there is no escaping from the fact that the platform contains thousands and thousands of themes and aesthetic modifications. In fact, it contains so many that a lot of people actually turn off the theme category to allow faster loading of the repositories. The work contained within the theme section tends to be anything ranging from a simple icon replacement to a full user interface replacement for the whole operating system. Photoshop gurus spend months working on full aesthetic replacements which contain numerous icon sets, wallpapers, animated lock screens and interactive widgets for things like weather and finance services.
But what if, like me, you are one of these people who actually likes the ‘stock’ look of the operating system? I personally use minor enhancements to tweak things like my docked icons, and will maybe add an additional wallpaper or two, but overall I am very happy with the native look of iOS. A new tweak in the Cydia store called FolderSwitcherColor will allow users to make subtle, but effective changes to all folder backgrounds and the background contained within the multi-tasking tray. FolderSwitcherColor isn’t a theme, but instead can be used independently to modify the stock folder or switcher colors.
From a usability perspective, it would be nice if the developer found someway of adding a settings option, allowing the end user to select a user defined color using RGB toggles for maximum customization, but until then the tweak is activated using Jay Freeman’s WinterBoard, and allows the choice of eleven different colors for the switcher and folder background. FolderSwitcherColor is developed by Raviraj Minawala and is available free of charge on the ModMyi repository within Cydia. The tweak is only available for Retina capable devices, which means your iPhone 4, 4S and iPod touch fourth generation.
You will obviously need to jailbreak your iPhone to install this tweak. For jailbreaking iPhone 4S and iPad 2, you can simply follow our step by step guide posted here to jailbreak iOS 5.0.1 using Absinthe on Windows or Mac. For those of you with iPhone 4, 3GS, iPad 1, and iPod touches can use Redsn0w or Sn0wbreeze to untether jailbreak on iOS 5.0.1.
Be sure to check out our iPhone Apps Gallery and iPad Apps Gallery to explore more apps for your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.
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