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5 Essential iOS 7 Cydia Tweaks for Google Users

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The official iOS 7 jailbreak has been available for a while now, and we’ve been taking some time to play around with a lot of jailbreak tweaks (old and new) for iOS 7 and seeing which ones are worth your time.

We’ve already discussed and featured a ton of iOS 7 Cydia tweaks that dramatically improve the iOS 7 experience, but we’re back. Since jailbreak developers are constantly updating and releasing new tweaks that are compatible with iOS 7, we figured it was time, once again, to tell you about some of the best iOS 7 Cydia tweaks that we’ve found.

This time around, however, we’re focusing on five jailbreak tweaks that are specifically aimed at iOS users who rely on a handful of Google apps.

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Google has come a long way on iOS, originally just being the default maps provider for the original Maps app. Since then, though, Google has brought its own Maps app to iOS, as well as Gmail, Google+, Hangouts, Google Voice, and a ton more. Here are five jailbreak tweaks that you should check out if you’re an avid Google apps user.

MapsOpener

With iOS, you can’t change default apps, which can be a bit of an annoyance, especially when you want Siri to use Google Maps instead of Apple Maps. Apple Maps is good and all, but it still has nothing on Google Maps.

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Luckily, there’s a jailbreak tweak called MapsOpener that changes the default maps app to Google Maps. That way any links to maps will open in Google Maps instead of Apple Maps. However, one of the big caveats to this tweak is that navigating to a destination using Siri will still open Apple Maps.

This isn’t a huge deal if you don’t use Siri that often, but I know I prefer to just tell Siri to “take me to [destination]” and it gives me directions just like that. It’s too bad it doesn’t work with Google Maps.

BrowserChooser

Just like with Apple Maps, iOS defaults to Safari as its web browser, but with BrowserChooser, you can have iOS default to Google Chrome instead. Safari is a fantastic web browser, but I know plenty of users who use Google Chrome on their desktop and the convenience of having bookmarks and history synced across devices is quite beneficial.

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Personally, I like to keep mobile browsing and desktop browsing separate, so I stick with Safari and use Google Chrome on the desktop, but in the past, I’ve used BrowserChanger when I briefly used Google Chrome on iOS and it worked marvelously.

SMS on GV 7

This tweak was originally introduced on iOS 5 and has since been updated for iOS 7 under the name SMS on GV 7. The tweak integrates Google Voice’s SMS functionality right into iMessage on your iPhone or iPad.

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Users can send text messages using their Google Voice number right in the Messages app and also receive text messages sent to their Google Voice number. Unfortunately, though, this tweak still doesn’t let you send photos through your Google Voice number, since the service itself doesn’t support it, but the tweak overall is way better than using the Google Voice app itself, which is horrid and needs updating.

Nitrous

Web browsing in Safari on an iOS device is really fast compared to using a third-party option like Google Chrome, mostly because Apple blocks third-party apps from using its Nitro Javascript Engine. However, it doesn’t have to be like that.

Nitrous is a really nice jailbreak tweak that gives third-party apps access to the Nitro Javascript Engine. Any app that accesses the internet and uses a webkit browser (Chrome, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) can take advantage of Nitrous, and in some cases, this can result in over three-times the performance boost than without Nitrous.

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So if you’re a Google Chrome user, be sure to download this tweak in order to get the best possible performance.

Fav

Fav is a simple, yet effective jailbreak tweak that adds some functionality to the left-swipe that used to bring up Spotlight Search in past iOS versions, but was reassigned to the down-swipe in iOS 7.

The tweak allows you to set a specific app to launch when you do a left-swipe, so if you use Gmail and check it often, assigning Gmail to the left-swipe makes it quick and easy to access your email whenever you need it.

I’ve always been looking for ways to utilize the left-swipe ever since iOS 7 was released and Fav just be the tweak that I’ve been looking for all these months.

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