complete jailbreaking tips post-Cydia-installation (May 2011)

(This is an email from May, 2011, that I sent to a friend who wanted some advice about jailbreaking... I've changed several of the components that I use since I wrote this, but the email was as follows...)

Good morning, get the theme iOverclock from Cydia. Keep the theme at the top of the WinterBoard's settings list so that you can toggle it off to save battery when needed. I don't need to explain myself to you on this one. If you don't get it, don't ever talk to me again. Also, I don't tether. I don't have any use for it yet, so I don't really care to know anything about it. I'm just the wrong guy to ask about tethering.

You'll want to have Cydia, App Store, and Settings icons highly accessible if you want to tweak as much and as often as I do since I realized that I could almost literally change anything on the fly. (I prefer to have WinterBoard close too, even though Settings brings you there... all the stuff I've added to Settings makes me have to scroll a ways for Winterboard.)

Here are the icons that I found I used the most... I never switch from the first SpringBoard unless if to search for an App quickly...

The Shortcuts are, from top left to bottom right:

Dragon Dictation

AccuWeather

Bank of America

Clock

Photos

Contacts

Phone

Calender

Notes

Maps

(Folder)

• YouTube
• Flixter
• Planets
• Slacker
• Pandora
• Shazam
• Audiogalaxy (I Stream my entire iTunes library to the phone instead of storing a single song on it. The interface of the App is almost totally similar, and with the sa,e features as the iPhone's audio player.)

App Store

WinterBoard

foursquare

Mail

Cydia

Settings

Facebook

biteSMS

(Dock)

• Safari
• Wikipedia
• WiBlaze (a faster loading, minimal no-tab browser)
• Dictionary
• Google

Free Air Mouse is in my opinion the best iPhone PC KB/M. Also, check to see if your home theater devices have remote control Apps available. My iPhone workswaaay better on Danielle's GoogleTV than her shitty Incrdible does...

Open Cydia; go to Manage, Sources... Edit, Add...

I don't remember which Sources were defaults. Just add the missing one from this screenshot:

The above will add cracked, free Apps to Cydia. Recommended Cydia Apps to install, or at least read about the features in Cydia Search:

Activator (I use this for almost everything. Especially for gesture quicklaunch of camera and flashlight mode.) *

AskToCall

Back to Top Contact

Barrel Cracked

Bigify

biteSMS Cracked *

BusyBar

CyDelete

DePersistWifi

Direct Closer

Display Recorder Cracked

EnhancedTabs *

Fast Copy

Gridlock Cracked

Helium

iCallRecorder

iWhiteboard

Lockinfo Cracked (also see plugins) *

MissedCallOpening

Multitasktures

Remove Background SBSettings Toggle

SBSettings

sbsettingstoggles

SpringFlash

Springtomize Cracked *

StayOpened

Tab+

WiCarrier

WiFi Passwords

* List items marked with asterisks, just download and examine the entire settings menus. 

Check out Apple's Settings on the iPhone and read everything. Turn everything on at least once, just to play with it. It might give you ideas later to take advantage of with a Jailbreak exploit. I use the blind accessibility toggle on a gestured toggle using Activator, to enable features on the fly for additional security, different multi-touch scrolling and selecting behaviors, etc.

This is my LockInfo. Fully customizable on the fly info on your lock screen and (if you want) one-click replying and editing abilities. View as much or as little info in the notifications as you want. Reorder and hide as desired. I highly recommend setting contact favorites for LockInfo. I use it way more frequently than I'd thought.

WinterBoard Themes may be moved up and down the list, and may override each other depending on their order in the list. In case you were curious about my SpringBoard theme from the first screenshot, sideWinderHD is the reason I've resized my icons and moved them around the border. It is a theme which turns the SpringBoard background to a functional calender, clock, and weather notification. widget. Here's the rest of the themes I am using, other than icon skins and Apple feature transparency masks.

Also, the first page of my SBSettings menu (I can pull this up at lockscreen, home, or in an App):

My SBSettings in the above screenshot are all service toggles, except for:

Brightness (calls a popup slider for brightness level adjustment on the fly)

RemoveBG (kills all running background Apps)

Processes (shows and allows editing of running Apps, offers a memory free-up button for cache, etc)

Also, a preview of the SBSettings UI customization extras:

With Free Mem always showing, and easy Kill App features, plus the iOverclock tweak, I can keep the memory clean and free, and the device will run at impressive speeds, and save battery power. I don't know if you've noticed the terrible lag in the Cydia App, but this helps a lot to make that bearable. Otherwise, I very rarely notice lag from local hardware insufficiencies. Just from shitty networks and poorly written Apps. I like to keep the Free Mem above 200MB and if possible 250-300MB to achieve the best speeds. I  use Multitasking constantly, but with the load time speed of most Apps, a lot of times, it is faster to use that memory for activity history cache. Close the multi-task-enabled Apps if you're not going back and forth, and many of them will remember what you were doing and open in the same state anyway.

Check Cydia for updates in the "Changes" tab often, and pay attention to the details when you're installing an add-on to a cracked App. some of the plugins have their own cracked versions because some of the normal ones uninstall the crack and reinstall the trial or whatever, but it tells you what activities it's about to perform just before you hit install. Now bring me beef jerky. Good day.