More than likely, you’re using Mobile Safari to do most of your Web
tasks on the go from your iPhone. With that being said, why deal with
the small feature set offered by Apple? You could use a new jailbreak
tweak called Canopy by iOS developer Jonathan Bailey to make
Mobile Safari even better with new features that make sharing and
managing Web pages easier with new shortcuts and gestures.
Canopy adds a large number of new features to Mobile Safari including the following:
Improved recently closed pages for back and forward functions
Tap
and hold on bookmark, history, reading list, or iCloud items to copy
their URL, add them to the reading list/bookmarks, or share them via
your favorite method
Add Paste & Search feature to the search bar
Add ability to delete individual recent search and history items
Add ability to close all open pages at once from open pages view
Access Safari Settings from the application
Tap and hold on view open pages button to open a new page
Tap and hold on bookmarks button to bookmark the current page
Mark reading list items as read or unread
Add ability to insert recent items into the search bar without searching
Customize the appearance of home screen shortcut icons
We'll start with what you can do with items in your Mobile Safari
history (non-private browsing). When you're in your Mobile Safari
history list, you're going to find that by tapping and holding on
individual items, you will see a new "More" button in the Action Menu
that pops up. Tapping on it will give you new sharing options, allowing
you to send the item to people so they can see it too through means of
Messages, Twitter, Facebook, or E-mail. Can also bookmark the page or
add it to your reading list:
You will also find that in the Mobile Safari search bar, there are more
options to use here as well. Recent items that you’ve searched for will
now have a blue arrow to the right of them that you can tap on to
automatically input those items into the search bar without performing a
search. This allows you to add on to the item to perform a more
complete search. In addition, you will be able to swipe on individual
items to reveal a delete button so you can remove individual items from
your recent searches without having to clear your entire history:
Users will also find a new Paste & Search option here when they tap
and hold on the search bar to bring up an Action Menu, which makes it
easy for the user to simply find something from another source and paste
it in and search for it immediately:
Canopy also adds improvements to the open pages screen. At the bottom of
the page, users will now find a new Share button, as well as a new
Settings button. The share button makes it so that the currently
displayed page can be added to the reading list or bookmarked. In
addition, the share button also gives the user a "Close All Pages"
button, which allows the user to close all of the Web pages that are
currently open in Mobile Safari at once without having to close out of
them individually. The gear button will launch the Mobile Safari
preferences pane in the Settings application to make it easier for the
user to access the browser's settings:
Those that take advantage of Mobile Safari’s reading list will also find
Canopy useful. By tapping and hold on items in the reading list, an
Action Menu will appear that lets the user mark items as read or unread:
The tweak even makes it so that when you’re adding a Web page shortcut
to your home screen, you can customize the way that the shortcut icon
will appear. You can add or remove the glass effect from the icon, as
well as choose to use the full screen view. The gloss removed makes
icons look flatter like they will look in iOS 7, while the glossy effect
might look better with iOS 6-style icons:
From the Canopy preferences pane in the Settings application, which is
added after you install the tweak from Cydia, you can configure some of
the ways the tweak will modify the behavior of Mobile Safari:
You will be able to choose whether or not tapping and holding on the
open pages button opens a new page or not, and then choose the animation
style for it. Also, you can choose whether tapping and holding on the
bookmarks button adds the currently-opened page to your bookmarks,
reading list, or does nothing. You can even choose to enable or disable
the Mobile Safari settings shortcut button from the open pages screen.
The preferences pane also includes documentation for the tweak's
features, as well as a support link so you can get in touch with the
developer.
Canopy appears to be a very structurally sound addition to the Mobile
Safari application for iOS. If you're looking for any of these
additional features, you can grab Canopy right now from Cydia's BigBoss
repository for the generous price of just 99¢. At this point in time,
Canopy is only compatible with the iPhone and iPod touch (not the iPad). Be sure to try it out and let us know about your thoughts!
Name: Canopy
Price: 99¢
Version: 0.1.0-13-1
Requirements: iPhone or iPod touch running iOS 6.0+
Repo: BigBoss
Developer: Jonathan Bailey
Editor's Rating: / 4.5/5