The final weeks of 2013 saw the release of the much anticipated iOS 7 jailbreak. Unfortunately, the jailbreak was buggy in its early days, but has known to been stable after that. With so many tweaks available in Cydia, we thought we would publish an article rounding up the top 5 ones you should consider installing immediately after your jailbreak. So, with no further ado, our top 5 essential jailbreak tweaks for your new jailbroken iOS device.

1. Zeppelin

One of the main reasons why many people jailbreak their iOS devices is to change the carrier logo present in the status bar. Zeppelin allows you to do just that. The app has been available in the Cydia store for quite a while, and has now been finally updated for iOS 7. Classic logos such as Superman, Dark Knight, Batman, the Assassin’s Creed logo and even the good old Apple logo are all there, with others thrown in for good measure. You can access all of these icons/logos by heading over to “Settings -> Zeppelin -> Theme” on your iOS device. I’ve removed the carrier text in the screenshot below, which gives the status bar a kind of nice look:

One of the best features about Zeppelin is that it also allows custom-made logos to be added. And there are tons of them present in the Cydia store. So, if you want a good Verizon icon instead of the standard carrier text, you can get one.

Zeppelin is available for free in the ModMyi repository (which is present by default), but you can also access and install it by navigating to “Manage -> Sources -> Edit -> Add” and typing in the “repo.alexzielenski.com” repository.

2. FlipControlCenter

One of the most used features in iOS 7 is the new Control Centre. The Control Centre, which can be accessed by swiping up from the bottom of the screen, is kind of a combination of SBSettings, Music Controls Pro and other packages. The feature allows you to turn off and on different toggles, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and the sort. A famous developer, Ryan Petrich, has now released a new tweak, dubbed FlipControlCenter, that allows you to customize iOS 7’s Control Centre by adding new toggles to the menu.

Once you’ve installed the tweak, you will also have the option to suppress toggles when you access Control Centre from the lock screen. You can also configure how many toggles switches you want to access per page.For example, you can increase it up to 6 or decrease it to just 2 switches per page or make it unpaged, instead of the standard 5 toggles. All of FlipControlCenter’s settings can be customized by navigating to “Settings -> FlipControlCenter”. Swipe through the toggles to view the next page.

FlipControlCenter is currently in beta mode, so expect it to be a little buggy. On the brighter side, the beta version is currently free, and we’re thinking that as soon as this app is out of beta, it is going premium. You can download FlipControlCenter from Ryan Petrich’s official repository – “http://rpetri.ch/repo/”.

3. HiddenSettings7

Beginning with iOS 7 beta 1, Apple started including some hidden springboard settings that weren’t really known about. A new tweak in Cydia now lets you access them. The tweak, named HiddenSettings7, lets you access internal tools that are used by Apple to test different animation speeds, UI tweaks, and other customizations. Overall, they won’t offer much, but it’s definitely a fun way to take advantage of your jailbroken device.

Once you’ve gone ahead and installed the tweak, you’ll find a new button under “Airplay” in the Control Centre, named “Springboard Settings.” Click on it, and it will open up a list of various options you can play with.

HiddenSettings7 is available for free in the BigBoss repository/ You can also install it from the repo: “http://repo.cydiahacks.com/”. Once the repo is installed, simply search for “Hidden Settings7” from the search tab and install it.

4. CustomLS

CustomLS, the full form of which is Custom LockScreen, is an app that gives you the ability to customize your lock screen. Once CustomLS is up and running on your iOS device, you can replace the “slide to unlock” text with custom text, remove the lock screen clock, set custom legal text, and more. If you don’t want grabbers to be present on your lock screen, you can remove them.

Open up the CustomLS section in the iOS Settings app to fully enable and disable various aspects of the lock screen. Custom LS is available for free in the BigBoss repository.

5. Showcase

Showcase is nice little tweak present in Cydia that changes the virtual iOS keyboard to display the current character case of the letters. By default, Apple has set the keyboard to always display the uppercase of letters, which can be annoying at times.

By installing Showcase, your keyboard will only show the uppercase letters when the Shift key is selected, otherwise your keyboard will display lowercase keys.  ShowCase does not add an icon to your SpringBoard or add any settings in the stock Settings application. It is activated as soon as you install it in Cydia.

I found this tweak to be helpful in typing quickly, and it really does help me send texts quicker. Showcase is available for free in the BigBoss repo.

What other gems have you uncovered in the Cydia store?

Shujaa Imran is MakeTechEasier’s resident Mac tutorial writer. He’s currently training to follow his other passion become a commercial pilot. You can check his content out on Youtube

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