iOS 7 is coming to your iPhone and iPad next Wednesday, but a lot of its best features are available through third-party apps and jailbreak hacks right now. If you want to get in on the action without losing your jailbreak, here a few ways to add some of the new functionality.
A Brand New Look
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The most noticeable change with iOS 7 is the way all the stock apps look. The design of the interface is completely new, so while you can’t exactly mimic this experience perfectly (yet) on iOS 6, it’s possible to theme your iPhone in a similar way with Winterboard if you’re jailbroken. The best part? It’s incredibly easy with a couple simple tweaks. Once you’re properly skinned, nobody will be the wiser that you’re not actually on iOS 7.
Control Center
Control Center is the new drawer in iOS 7 that gives you instant access to settings like Airplane mode, Bluetooth, and more. Just swipe up from the bottom of the screen and you get quick access to your toggles. This feature has been on jailbroken iPhones for a very long time with SBSettings or NCSettings. With SBSettings up and running, it’s incredibly easy to create all your own toggles right now. If you want an iOS-style grabber at the bottom of the screen, just snag a copy of LockBar Pro. You can even customize it with whatever toggles you want so you’re not stuck with the Apple defaults.
Likewise, you can make Notification Center look and work just like iOS 7 with the jailbreak tweak Ayra.
True Multitasking
Another big addition in iOS 7 is how it handles multitasking. Now, apps are given priority based on how often you use them, and with some (hopefully) clever memory management, your apps should run in the background without draining your battery too much. Unfortunately, you can’t really reproduce this function exactly at the moment. However, if you want true multitasking, Background Manager for jailbroken devices gets you pretty close. You can set apps to always run in the background, even on reboot, and set up app switching on a priority basis so only certain apps stay running. If you also want to add in a new multitasking app switcher that looks like iOS 7, Dash is a good place to start.
AirDrop
AirDrop is the new iOS 7 feature to easily share photos and files with other iPhone users in your area. It’s been a long requested feature from iPhone users, and while it doesn’t have the same deep integration with iOS as the Apple option will, Bump is a free app that gets the job done. Just load up Bump and you can share photos with any other Bump users around you in a couple steps. The nice things about Bump is that you can also instantly share photos with your computer as well. For an alternative to Bump, you can also check out Filedrop.
Additional Siri Commands
One of the minor new features in iOS 7 is a slew of new Siri commands. While we’ll have to wait and see exactly what these new commands include, for now you can download AssistantEnhancer for jailbroken devices to add a ton of new commands. You can find the full list of commands AssistantEnhancer adds to Siri right here.
Automatic App Updates
Another minor new feature in iOS 7 is automatic app updates. It seems silly on the surface, but anyone who has watched the badge count add up on the App Store icon knows how annoying it is that iOS can’t update itself. In iOS 7 that’ll all happen in the background. Auto App Updater is a jailbreak app that allows you to set up specific times when your iPhone looks for and downloads all available app updates for you so you don’t have to worry about it anymore.
iTunes Radio
We think that iTunes Radio actually has a lot of potential, but it’s certainly not anything new. You have a ton of options for streaming music and radio, so whether you chose Pandora, Spotify, or whatever else, you’ll have a comparable experience to what iTunes Radio is offering.
Better Photo Organization
iOS 7 brings with it a smarter system for organizing your photos that’s a lot easier to use. Jailbroken or not, you can’t get this exact experience in the default photos app, but you can use the previously mentioned app Photoful. It looks and acts almost exactly like the new Photos app, with better organization, automatic collections, and more.
Better App Resizing on the iPad
This is an incredibly minor feature in iOS 7, but if you run a iPhone-only app on the iPad it now uses the retina display graphics and shows it much larger and clearer. This is great for those few apps that don’t have iPad versions. It has been available on jailbroken iPads for a long time as RetinaPad.
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