Awais Naseer on 22 January at 6:24 pm

You have jailbroken your iPhone 4S or the iPad 2, you have got Cydia, now what? Well, when you have a jailbroken iDevice you have the freedom of installing anything on it. Apple can no longer restrict you to the App store apps. Read on and we’ll help you rock with your device.

What is Cydia?

Cydia is the app store for the jailbroken iOS devices. Here you can find the apps that would never get approved by Apple for availability on the official app store. The very first thing that would come to your mind are the themes and tweaks. There are thousands of themes available in Cydia most of which are free. There are hundreds of tweaks available as well that let you change the functionality of your iOS device. You can change the way notifications are displayed, how your SMS app works and what your photos app does. You can even control what your home button does and a lot lot more. Cydia is not all about installing pirated apps, if you have jailbroken to get paid apps for free we are sorry, you are at the wrong place.

How to use Cydia

Cydia works differently than the app store, it doesn’t host and control all the apps. Apps are hosted by third party repos which you can add manually. BigBoss, ModMyi and a few other repos are already added by default and contain most of the famous jailbreak apps. In order to add a new repo, follow the following steps.

1. Pick up your iPhone 4S or the iPad 2 and start Cydia. Once you are on Cydia, go to Manage tab at the bottom and then tap Sources.
2. On the Sources tab, tap the Edit button on the top right of the screen and then choose Add on the left. A textbox would appear, add the URL of the repo you want to add and tap Add URL. Cydia would verify the URL and add the repo to Cydia.
3. In order to install an app, go to Search tab, you can search for any app or theme you want. We discuss some of the must-have apps below.

Must-have jailbreak apps/tweaks

You can have some of the stunning apps and tweaks from Cydia, some of them are free, others are paid.

1. Winterboard (Free)

Winterboard is the jailbreak tweak that lets you change the look and feel of your iDevice. Search for it in Cydia, install it, once Winterboard is installed, look the themes section of Cydia and install any theme.

2. Activator (Free)

Activator lets you change the working of your iDevice. You can change what your volume buttons do, how your iPhone / iPad’s home button works and so on. It’s also free and available from BigBoss repo on Cydia.

3. SBSettings (Free)

SBSettings would add quick access toggles for various settings like wifi, bluetooth, 3G, brightness and others.

4. Insomnia (Free)

Your wi-fi is automatically turned off when your display is turned off on your iDevice and you are not connected to a power source. This is very annoying in many cases when you are downloading stuff or want some stuff run in the background. Insomnia solves this problem for you, install it and turn it on and your wi-fi would not turn off with the display. It’d increase your battery consumption so don’t forget to turn it off when you don’t need it.

5. iFile (Paid $4.99)

iFile is the files manager for your iPhone or the iPad. It lets you access the storage of your device, view files and folders, copy and do a bunch of stuff you do on your PC or Mac.

6. IntelliscreenX (Paid $9.99)

IntelliscreenX adds a lot of functionality to your lock screen. You can control your iDevice’s various settings like w-fi, bluetooth, data; view social feeds, text messages or weather; view and mark emails, reply to texts and a lot more. It is free to try but $9.99 is the actual price once the trial is over.

7. PhotoAlbums+ (Paid $4.99)

PhotoAlbums+ changes how your photos app works on your iPhone or iPad. Apple has added the ability to manage photos in albums but they haven’t done that right, Photoalbums+ has. You can move photos to albums, secure them with passcodes etc. We have a complete review of PhotoAlbums+ in case you want to read before you purchase.

8. CallBar (Paid $3.99)

iOS 5 has the notification bars that appear on top of the screen and do not interrupt you when there’s a new notification but that does not work with incoming calls. CallBar adds that functionality to your iPhone. Get it from BigBoss repo on Cydia.

9. BiteSMS (Paid $9.99)

BiteSMS would totally change your SMS experience, you can set passcodes to your messages, auto-forwarders, smileys, quick SMS replies and a lot more.

10. Celeste Bluetooth File Sharing (Paid $9.99)

Celeste is the most amazing bluetooth file sharing app you’d see. It adds the ability of file sharing to your iDevice over bluetooth. Download it and you’d never have any difficulty sharing files with your friends either they have iPhones or any other bluetooth enable devices.