5 iOS 8 Cydia Tweaks for Touch ID

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 a must have for your Touch ID-enabled iOS device, like the iPhone 6 and the iPad Air 2.

The TaiG dev team is responsible for this latest jailbreak and they’re a recent addition to the jailbreak community, first breaking into the scene just recently with the release of an iOS 8.1.1 jailbreak, allowing users to jailbreak their devices running on the latest version of iOS.

The iOS 8 jailbreak from Pangu, however, is also still running strong on devices that are running iOS 8.1. The Pangu dev team is also a recent addition to the jailbreak community, breaking into the scene with their iOS 7.1.2 jailbreak back in June shortly after the update released from Apple.

We’ve decided to highlight Apple’s Touch ID fingerprint sensor for this week’s list of great iOS 8 Cydia tweaks, so if you have an iPhone 5s or newer, or an iPad Air 2 or iPad mini 3, these tweaks are for you.

UnlockID

One of the niftiest Touch ID jailbreak tweak making the rounds is UnlockID, which allows users to unlock their Mac computer with their Touch ID-enabled iPhone or iPad.

UnlockID can also store website passwords and will automatically fill them in using your fingerprint whenever you visit a password-protected website in your browser of choice on your Mac.

Of course, you could just have your web browser remember your passwords for you, but if you’re a bit paranoid about others getting on your computer and logging into your Facebook account, UnlockID can be the perfect companion to prevent such a thing from ever happening.

VirtualHome

The first-ever Cydia tweak to take advantage of the Touch ID fingerprint sensor was Virtual Home, and the idea behind it is to save some of the stress load that you would normally put on the iPhone’s Home button — clicking it dozens of times per day, or even more.

Instead, with Virtual Home, you can simulate a Home button press by just tapping on the Home button using the Touch ID fingerprint sensor. Tapping the Home button once will take users back to the home screen, while tapping and holding it will launch the multitasking tray/app switcher.

While you may think that this tweak would have trouble activating Siri, it is possible. A reader has mentioned in the past that you can set either “Tap and Hold” or “Double Tap” to multitask, sleep, do nothing, and Siri.

Touchy

While BioLockdown prevents you from opening apps without a fingerprint authorization, Touchy actually launches apps with a scan of the finger.

Furthermore, using Touch ID’s abilities to detect specific fingers, Touchy can launch certain apps according to which finger you scan. For example, you can have the Facebook app open when you scan your index finger and have the Twitter app launch whenever you scan your pinky finger.

Unfortunately, Touchy only supports up to five assignments, which is one app to every finger for one hand. We’d like to see the ability for ten different app assignments, but we certainly can’t complain with what we have now.

BioLockdown

In the past we’ve mentioned a jailbreak tweak called BioProtect, which allows you to password-protect certain apps using your fingerprint so that you can only access them by scanning your finger using the Touch ID home button, but a jailbreak tweak called BioLockdown is cheaper and offers more features and settings to play around with than BioProtect.

Not only can you lock apps with a fingerprint, but you can also restrict certain settings and only enable them with the scan of your finger. For instance, if you don’t want others disabling WiFi when they get a hold of your phone, you can set a fingerprint lock on that toggle to prevent others from disabling the WiFi, and the same goes for other toggles and even shutting down the device itself.

Activator

Activator itself isn’t a dedicated Cydia tweaks for Touch ID, but it includes the capability of assigning pretty much any Activator action to your iPhone or iPad’s Touch ID fingerprint sensor.

To assign a Touch ID gesture to an Activator action, head into Activator’s settings and tap on Anywhere. Scroll down just a bit until you find the Fingerprint Sensor section (it should already be near the top). Then select one of the available Touch ID gestures and assign it an Activator action just like you would with any other gesture in the app.