Cydia, or Cydia Store, is a collection of downloadable applications for iOS. Cydia is made for Mac, iPod, iPad, and iPhone but provides users with applications that are not available from Apple. Cydia products range in price from $1 to $20 and include a wide variety of tools that aid the user in everything from managing their files to organizing their address book. Cydia can be used by anyone who owns an Apple product and can be obtained by either changing the root of the directory tree to “/” (without quotations) or by using the Apple Installer with http://apptapp.saurik.com/ as the Installer source. To allow the user to better understand what Cydia has to offer, this article will list a number of Cydia applications.
IFile
iFile is a file manager and viewer for the iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad. IFile allows users to view and modify files instantly, bookmark webpages, files, and folders, and access a wide variety of programs including PDF files, text files, HTML documents, compressed files, videos, music, and Microsoft formats. IFile also supports file compression and extraction, email, and can allow users to upload and download files from its built-in web server. IFile was created by Carsten Heinelt and is available from the Cydia Store for $4.00.
Ringtone Shuffler
Ringtone Shuffler is a program available from the Cydia Store made for Blackberry, Windows Mobile Smartphones, Palm Treos, Centros, Android, T-Mobile G1, and iPhone. Ringtone Shuffler allows the user to shuffle their ringtones so that a different one plays each time a call is recieved. Users are able to shuffle their entire ringtone collection or select specific ringtones that they would like to shuffle. For example, if the user has several ringtones that make up one complete song, he/she would be able to use Ringtone Shuffler to listen to each of them as calls are recieved. Ringtone Shuffler was made by Efiko Software, LLC, is available from both Cydia and other sources, and can be purchased for $1.99.
YourTube
YourTube is an open source J2ME program that allows users to search for YouTube videos and download them to iPods, iPhones, and other Apple products. YourTube supports multiple video formats including MP4, FLV, and 3GP. The software can also download videos in the background so that the user is never disturbed by current downloads and can also list videos in a download queue so that the user can select which videos should be downloaded first. YourTube was made by Daniel Peebles and is available from the Cydia Store for $2.00.
gPSPhone
gPSPhone is a software emulator for Gameboy Advance that can play thousands of different GBA games on the user’s iPod Touch or IPhone. GPSPhone allows the user to change the the layout and skin of his/her controllers, has a built-in real-time clock, and has no advertisements whatsoever. GPSPhone does not, however, provide the actual games so these must be found and loaded via an external source. GPSPhone was created by ExoPhase and is available from the Cydia Store for $4.99.
iWipe
iWipe is a simple program that is able to completely erase data from the user’s iPhone. IWipe works by writing zeros to the free space on the iPhone so that absolutely no deleted files can be recovered by hacking software or other common recovery tactics. Calls can still be recieved and the phone can be locked while iWipe is in use. IWipe was created by Jonathan Zdziarski and can be purchased from the Cydia Store for $2.99.
