How To Use The iPhone Lockscreen To Launch Apps [Jailbreak]

Over the years, we’ve seen some great Cydia tweaks that add functionality to the iPhone lockscreen. The jailbreak community has always managed to find ways to improve how the iPhone operates. Recently, such a tweak has surfaced, courtesy of developer iolate. It’s called AppDialer and as its name suggests, AppDialer is an iPhone lockscreen app that allows you to dial a combination to launch an app or perform a certain function on your jailbroken iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad.

AppDialer allows a user to enable the iPhone lockscreen to dial in a combination on its keypad to perform an activator function or launch an app. Alternately, you may use an Android-mimicking connect-the-dots pattern to put in the same combination and a predefined function will be performed.

AppDialer is highly customizable, though it doesn’t leave an icon on the Springboard and all settings can be accessed under the native Settings.app. The application relies on the infamous Activator and needs to be mapped with a certain function first to pull up the dialer/pattern from the iPhone lockscreen. In my case, tapping the clock on my iPhone lockscreen twice will bring up AppDialer. You can modify these and other options within the tweak’s settings.

As you can see in the screenshot above, pattern mode is disabled by default. If you choose to enable it, you can switch between both by using a switch button, providing more flexibility in terms of input method.

AppDialer supports all Activator functions, so that means you can virtually configure the app with any feature of iOS, be it toggling the state of your WiFi connection, pulling up quick compose for BiteSMS or launching a specific app directly from the iPhone lockscreen. For instance, this combination in the previous screenshot allows me to launch my these-days-favorite time killer, Fruit Ninja, right from the iPhone lockscreen without having to flip through pages of apps.

AppDialer is one of those Cydia tweaks that are both productive and fun. For one, it adds a fresh new feel to already-existing interaction methods for iOS like pinch, tap, swipe etc., and it provides more flexibility for a larger range of mapped actions, limited only by the number of possible combinations (and your memory, since you need to remember all of the combinations in the first place). From my experience, the tweak is quite useful for those apps and functions that you need to use quite often. However, you shouldn’t really map too many functions just for the sake of it.

Available on the BigBoss repository (which is among default Cydia sources unless manually deleted), AppDialer is free and highly recommended. Let us know your experience with it through your comments, and spread the word among your friends.