Cydia’s Best Apps: My Top Jailbreak Applications

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I've been rocking a jailbroken iPhone for a few months now, and I must say I absolutely love it. It feels just like when I switched to Linux: power to the community, freedom of choice and usage, open source spirit... and you're pretty much on your own if shit hits the fan. I've blogged about the best Cydia applications I found in the past (Top 10 Cydia Apps and Top 10 Cydia Apps Redux), but I feel it's time to update that list and share it with you all. "Why?" might you ask. Simple. My needs and interests change regularly. The software source being Cydia, applications can be harder to find than with the centralized Apple App Store. New apps are added to Cydia on a daily basis, and new repositories are created daily, so new stuff is easy to find - good stuff is harder. There are a few tools on the interwebs to help you by attempting to centralize the Cydia apps information (appRater, ModMyi, hackint0sh, iPhoneFreakz, BigBoss, iSpazio), but it's still more challenging than your search-and-tap routine.

Here goes a revamped list of my current essential Cydia apps for your jailbroken iPhone in no particular order. I'm gonna leave out the obvious like Cydia and OpenSSH.

1. WinterBoard: This application allows you to customize pretty much everything you might want to customize on your iPhone. The interesting thing about it is that as a bonus to the default options, you can install plugins that are available for it in Cydia - and there are a lot of them. Themes for the LockScreen, SMS, Applications, SpringBoard, Keyboard, Sounds and much more.
2. SBSettings: Adds a bunch of configuration option such as hiding icons, toggling WiFi/SSH/Bluetooth and more. There are also a bunch of plugins for it. Just the ability to hide the annoying Stocks, Youtube, iTunes, Notes and Calculator icons I never use is really refreshing.
3. StatusNotifier: Adds icons in the top status bar for SMS, emails and calls, near the battery display.
4. FontSwap: This app provides an easy way to swap system fonts. Just select your font from the list provided by the font swap starter pack and select to respring and you will have new fonts! There's also a bunch of add-on fonts available, and new ones pop up everyday.
5. iTypeFastR: iTypeFastR is an app for iPhone, that adds a special keyboard (available as landscape too!). The keyboard allows you to type faster and with less typos, because on average the keys are much larger. This keyboard makes better use of the available room on the screen. Often used letters are bigger then less used ones. On average, you therefore hit bigger buttons. Check this video to see it in action. (Note: iTypeFastR is one of the very few apps in Cydia's App Store. It's free for the first 5000 users, but if you're out of luck, you can buy it here for an acceptable $3.99)
6. PwnPlayer: A full-featured media player that aims to be a replacement for the stock media player. It mimics almost the same interface with the same functionality, plus enables a lot of extra cool features such as filesystem playback, search, lock-screen gesture based playback control, and on-the-fly playlist managing. Check out the features or a video of PwnPlayer in action. The very cool thing about PwnPlayer is that in order to get music on your iPhone, you simply copy it over via SSH! For people for whom this matters, it's one big step towards Linux-only iPhone usage.
7. Icy: Icy is Ripdev's take on the freeware package manager that uses APT repositories to install and remove packages available in another free iPhone installer application, Cydia. The goal was to create a fast, lightweight and more slick solution that is easy and cool to use. And it is much faster and much prettier than Cydia indeed.
8. LogoMe: LogoMe allows you to change your iPhone's boot logo to whatever you want. Just give the app a picture (either in your iPhone or via HTTP) and it'll convert it to the appropriate format and set it as your boot logo just like that.
9. This little python script. Use it to convert your application icons (Apple uses some kind of special PNG format, go figure). You'll need GNU C Compiler (gcc) and libpng (just "png" in the repositories).
10. Kate: I'm not too sure about Kate, but it certainly looks promising. Kate is made by Ripdev, the people who make Icy and a few other quality apps, so it's why I'm putting it on this list even though it's not a free app. Kate is an unique package of little tools for your iPhone that can be installed separately from each other. Each module provides its own set of features aimed to make your use of iPhone more productive and fun. Two important notes before listing some of Kate's awesome modules: it seems to be only installable via Installer and not Cydia or Icy. It appears in all three, but won't run successfully unless installed via Installer. Also, I couldn't get most of Kate's features to work, but I'm guessing that's because I'm running an already heavily modified iPhone and some conflicts are happenning (Smard Dialer with WinterBoard Keypad theme, System Font with FontSwap, µCalendar with WinterBoard, etc). Let me know if you successfully get it to run! You can buy Kate here for 32.09$. Now for some of Kate's modules:
    • Smart Dialer: Favorites list inside of Phone application sure is convenient, but it's not as best as it can be… with Smart Dialer calling your contact has never been easier — simply start typing the name on the numeric keypad and watch Dialer suggest a list of contacts in a snap.
    • µCalendar: Ever wanted to quickly find out what day of the week is a certain date within the month from today? Or, even more, quickly check a list of pending events for today without having to unlock the phone and launching Calendar? µCalendar makes it possible — and it does just that — a quick access to your current agenda. No adding of new events, no previews for five years ahead — why make simple complicated?
    • Privacy: Grinding your teeth every time you're in a middle of showing your latest photo album to friends and an SMS arrives, blocking half of the screen? Or ever had your closest one raise an eyebrow when an unexpected SMS arrives? Well, Privacy is for you! With just one click of a button… er, finger, you'll be able to turn these alerts off, or hide the message text on that pop-up window, or even stop any notifications whatsoever on new SMS arrival. We respect your privacy.
    • System Font: That one is basically everything FontSwap is - but only for font used by the system... It's bundled with Kate. Convenient. Not sure how many third-party fonts are provided though.
    • Reminder: Is basically the same as StatusNotifier. Again, the advantage is that it's bundled with Kate.

A quick note about Ripdev

Ripdev seems to be on a rampage to recode popular applications for jailbroken iPhones. I guess it was inevitable. Letting Cydia have all the "market share" of jailbroken iPhone can't be a good thing in the long run. Competition breeds excellence! Cydia's much ahead though, which is normal considering they pretty much pioneered everything in that field, along with the famous dev-team. I don't get why they competition with third-party applications and not directly with Cydia though. They've already rolled out Icy and their version of Installer, which replace Cydia and their version of Installer. They should just concentrate on building a community to rival Cydia's, in my opinion. But whatever. Maybe they're on to something with their Kali Anti-Piracy system. Here are some examples of applications/features Ripdev have recoded:

1. Hood: Ripdev's SBSettings clone does everything SBSettings does, but it has less features. You can't toggle SSH for example. But there's an included process list/kill, which is a third-party plugin in SBSettings. And it hasn't been updated since December 2008. Shame, it had real potential.
2. System Font: As mentioned above, that's a clone of FontSwap bundled with Kate. It's however limited by lack of community and third-party plugins (fonts) and range of font swapping (it only replaces system fonts).
3. Reminder: Another clone of a popular application, StatusNotifier. Quite similar, can't really tell the difference. Maybe the icons.. Also bundled with Kate.
4. Icy: Obviously! The only competitor to Cydia. However, I think it globally wins. It's prettier and faster than Cydia but there are a few drawbacks. First, you can't choose to modify a package, you only have the option to remove it. The modify option appear only on core packages.
5. FaceLift: From within Kate, this application is a theming engine. It basically renders WinterBoard useless. But again, WinterBoard can rely on thousands of themes already created by its community.

Edit: This post is old and outdated. I'm aware. When it was published, it was accurate. Please refrain from saying "Oh man this doesn't exist anymore". Just read the newer posts instead )