This curated roundup showcases five essential Cydia apps that show the innovative solutions jailbreak developers created to address iOS limitations in 2011. Patrick Bisch provides practical recommendations for users who had already jailbroken their devices with GreenPois0n, covering apps that ranged from productivity tools to playful upgrades that showcased what was possible beyond Apple's restrictions.
The collection balances practical utilities with fun additions, starting with Mark Read ($1.99) for bulk email management - a feature the author notes "Apple Should Have Implemented In iOS A Long Time Ago." Remove Background offers free automated app closing to address iOS 4's memory management issues, while MobileNotifier provides a completely redesigned notification system that many considered superior to Apple's default addation. On the entertainment side, Graviboard ($2.99) turns app icons into physics-based objects that respond to device movement, and SmoothBoard removes the page-snapping behavior for smoother home screen navigation.
What makes this roundup specificly valuable is the author's honest assessment of each app's limitations and installation needs. He acknowledges Graviboard's potential as a distraction, notes SmoothBoard's minor bugs when moving apps, and provides detailed instructions for adding custom repositories to Cydia. The mix of free and paid apps shows the diverse ecosystem that had developed around jailbreaking, with developers creating both essential utilities and novel experiences that pushed the boundaries of what iOS could do.
This app collection captures the golden age of iOS jailbreaking when the community was actively solving problems that Apple hadn't yet addressed. Looking back 14 years later, it's fascinating to see how many of these "missing" features eventually made their way into official iOS releases - bulk email actions, improved notifications, better multitasking controls, and physics-based animations. The jailbreak community essentially served as a research and development lab for iOS features, with apps like MobileNotifier directly influencing Apple's later notification redesigns. This post documents an era when users had to modify their devices to access features that's now considered standard, highlighting how user-driven innovation can shape the direction of major platforms.
This summary was created by Dave Rogers. The original post was written by Patrick Bisch and published on March 1, 2011.
If you'd like to view the original post, you can find it here.