5 Essential iOS 8 Cydia Tweaks

The iOS 8 jailbreak is officially out and available for all iPhones and iPads that are capable of running iOS 8. Here are five iOS 8 Cydia tweaks that work with the latest version of iOS that are essential to the functionality of your iPhone or iPad.

The Pangu dev team is responsible for this latest jailbreak and they’re a recent addition to the jailbreak community, first breaking into the scene with their iOS 7.1.2 jailbreak back in June shortly after the update released from Apple.

The iOS 8 jailbreak technically released earlier last month, but since it was a very early release and it didn’t even include Cydia, it was deemed merely a developer release so that tweak devs could get their apps and tweaks working for iOS 8. It actually wasn’t until just recently when the iOS 8 jailbreak became stable enough for public consumption.

However, the iOS 8 jailbreak is now stable enough for regular users to install, and Cydia has been fully updated for iOS 8, allowing users to download and install tweaks. Most popular tweaks have been updated for iOS 8, but there are still a handful that need updated for the new version of iOS.

Here are five iOS 8 Cydia tweaks that are compatible with iOS 8 jailbroken devices and are worth a download.

FolderCloser

FolderCloser was a jailbreak tweak for iOS 6, but it was updated for iOS 7 as well. While it hasn’t be officially updated for iOS 8 yet, it still works with the new version, so it’s definitely worth downloading.

If you get annoyed by folders staying open after you launch and close an application from within said folder, then you need to download and install FolderCloser right now. It automatically closes the opened folder, so when you exit an app, you’ll be brought back to the home screen rather than to the folder that the app belongs in. It’s a dead-simple tweak, but it fixes a huge iOS annoyance.

IconRenamer

The iOS layout doesn’t allow for long app names, or else the text gets cut off. This means that some app names show up abbreviated on the home screen. Furthermore, some apps have weird names, like the Reddit app Alien Blue. If you want to rename apps on the home screen, there’s now a tweak for that.

IconRenamer allows you to rename an app to your liking. For instance, you can change “Alien Blue” to “Reddit” so that you know it’s the Reddit app, or name an app something silly just for fun.

It’s a small tweak, but it can be fun to play around with and make your home screen a bit more professional looking.

CCHide

We discussed a new jailbreak tweak for the iOS 7 Control Center called FlipControlCenter awhile back, but a new tweak called CCHide, takes all the clutter out of the Control Center and gives you just the bare essentials that you need.

CCHide allows you to remove certain settings from the Control Center and shrink down that pop-up menu that appears when you swipe up from the bottom of the screen.

There aren’t a lot of settings to choose from, so it’s rather simple and straightforward, but it does allow you to make the music section appearance conditional, meaning that the music controls only appear in the Control Center when music is playing, which is really handy and cleans things up a bit.

StatusHUD 2

I don’t know about you, but whenever I’m watching a video and want to adjust the volume, I hate when the volume status graphic pops up right in the middle of the video and won’t go away until a few seconds after you’re done adjusting the volume. This is really annoying, but thankfully there’s a jailbreak tweak to fix that.

StatusHUD 2 moves the volume status to the top of the screen onto the status bar so that it’s always out of the way. You can even change some of the settings for the tweak, including the shape (either circles or squares), and even change how long it takes for the volume status to disappear after you’ve adjusted the volume.

If you still prefer having the traditional pop-up, but maybe just want it faded a bit, you can download TransparentVolume, which tones down the opacity of the pop-up so that you can still somewhat see the whole screen without the volume pop-up blocking everything entirely.

UntetheredHeySiri

An awesome new feature in iOS 8 is the ability to activate Siri without having to press down on the Home button. Simply just holler “Hey Siri” and it’ll bring it up.

However, this feature only works with your iPhone is plugged into a power source, but a new iOS 8 tweak called UntetheredHeySiri enables the voice activation with or without your device being plugged in.

This is perhaps one of the biggest tweaks, seeing as how not all users constantly have their iPhones or iPads plugged in, so being able to use Hey Siri at anytime is an awesome feature to have.