Jailbreak Addendum

After yesterday’s post on jailbreaking there was quite a bit of response via email and Twitter. I received quite a few tips and links, but for the most part the feedback was either, welcome to the club, or, now I’m gonna try it. Also after yesterday’s post I had renewed vigor to geek out a bit more with my jailbroken iPhone, and so I spent some time surfing for icons and fiddling with new apps. Through all of which I’ve discovered a few things worth sharing here.

Regarding Icons and Themes

  • This afternoon I spent some time gathering properly styled icons for the Matte Nano theme that are not currently included in the Cydia install package. What I couldn’t find online I created in Photoshop.

Altogether, these include: Tweetie 2, Things, Fever, Pastebot, Birdhouse, Blimp, Ninjawords, Boggle, Orbital, Mill Colour, Mint (stats), Mint (money), Simplenote, Dropbox, Ego, Canabalt, Settings, and Tilt Shift Generator.

If you are interested, I’ve zipped these icons — along with the Matte Nano icon template PSD file — and posted them for download here.

  • When adding or replacing icons in a theme, the png filename is case sensitive, and has to exactly match the name of the app as it appears on the springboard.

  • Just Another iPhone Blog has more info on how to change or add icons to a theme. Like Thomas says, “it’s all just a matter of knowing which folders your image files are in, and then replacing the particular icons you’d like to change.”

Regarding Apps

  • I never realized this until today, but there was no need for me to delete the OpenSSH app to avoid possible hijacking. It can easily be enabled / disabled via SBSettings.

  • ProSwitcher: If you are using Backgrounder to keep apps running in the background, then ProSwitcher allows you to view and go to those apps with a UI very similar to the way Mobile Safari presents multiple Webpages. (Thanks to reader John Rust for the tip.)

After a day of use, the concept of ProSwitcher seems a lot more exciting then its actual usefulness. Especially on my iPhone 3GS where apps launch so quickly, and quitting out of one and starting another is almost faster than using ProSwitcher to switch between them. Usefulness (to me, at least) aside, the design and functionality of ProSwitcher is top notch — perhaps this is the most native-feeling, jailbreak app I have.

  • Unfortunately, Pastebot does not work as you wish it might if you set it to continue running in the background. So far as I can tell, Pastebot is programmed to copy in what’s on the iPhone’s clipboard at the time of startup, not at any time a new item is added. Thus, if you leave Pastebot running in the background it does not continue to collect all copied bits of text and images from your iPhone (or Mac if synced).
Jailbreak Addendum