Cydia is overflowing with packages, tweaks and extensions relating to pretty much every part of iOS, but one area that hasn’t really received a great deal of third-party developer attention is the Mobile Safari web browser that ships as part of the OS. Granted, it is a pretty decent web browser by default, but nothing is perfect, and like a lot of other parts of Apple’s mobile operating system, it needs some work.
The Swipe Safari tweak that landed in Cydia earlier has already gone through a number of updates and is quite possibly the biggest tweak to be made available for Safari, bringing awesome usability options to those who frequently make use of the eb browser on a jailbroken iOS device. The name might actually give away the package’s main functionality, but if you haven’t guessed it, it is a swipe and gesture-based tweak and pretty much reinvents Safari.
First and foremost, installing this tweak allows users to navigate to the previous or next page through the use of one finger swipes or a simple webpage dragging gesture. The tweak also works with screen pulling gestures in a similar fashion to how the popular pull to refresh method works on the device. One of the more hidden, but neat little features of Swipe Safari is the fact that it removes the limitations on how many tabs a user can have open in Safari, brining a truly unlimited browsing experience.
The gesture implementation is where the magic really happens with this package though, with built-in support for a number of different methods:
- Swipe with two fingers.
- Swipe with three fingers
- Double tap and triple tap through the use of one finger.
- Double tap with two fingers.
- Pinch the screen with two fingers.
- Tap and double tap, plus long press with one finger.
As if that wasn’t enough, Swipe Safari also implements a much requested full-screen mode for Safari, something that third-party browsers have been offering for quite some time but has never made it to Apple’s official browser yet. All options for this teak can be configured through a dedicated preferences panel in the Settings app.
Swipe Safari is available to download from the BigBoss repository at a sale cost of $1.50, rising to $2.99 after this week and requires iOS 5.0 or above.
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