One of the best reasons to jailbreak has to be because the default Springboard just sucks at organizing hundreds of applications. I’d say there are seven major ways to organize your home screens using 3rd party applications: some can require extensive set-up, but some are as easy as installing and playing. Most of these apps and tweaks can be found on Cydia, unless otherwise specified.
Overboard – $1.99, Orbit – $1.99
If you just want to organize your home screens, or know all of your app icons at a glance, then either of these two apps will do the trick. They essentially function as a sort of iPhone Exposé, showing you thumbnails of each home screen and allowing you to easily jump to any one with a tap. My recommendation is Overboard by rpetrich, since stroughtonsmith doesn’t seem to be doing much with iPhone apps these days.
SpringJumps – Free
SpringJumps by ashikase is a great idea that I only discovered recently (thanks to SmokingApples): the app provides up to eight Springboard icons that can warp you to any page simply by tapping on them. The app is best used if you’re able to skin and place all of the Jump icons in the dock.
Infinidock – $0.99, Infiniboard – $1.99
Another way to simply modify the default Springboard is to use either or both of chpwn’s Infini-tweaks. Infinidock lets you jam more stuff into your iPhone dock, as well as swipe through it like Springboard pages. Infiniboard allows vertical scrolling Springboard pages without the 16-icon limit, so you can finally jam all 50 of your iPhone games onto one page. Chpwn’s tweaks work quite nicely with Overboard.
Categories – Free: Essentially folder support for Springboard. Just create a category, fill it with apps, and then it appears like any other icon on your Springboard. Tapping on a Category will open it on a separate, scrollable page.
CategoriesSB – $0.99: A faster version of Categories, but a commercial tweak.
Stacks – still in beta, donation required for access: Like a flashier version of CategoriesSB, but it only allowed up to four stacks last time I used it. Visit Steven Troughton Smith’s website for more information, as well as the download links.
PogoPlank – $1.99: Described as a Springboard replacement, the current version of PogoPlank replaces the area above your iPhone dock with a spinning wheel and a set of folders. Like Categories, you still have to do a lot of manual set-up to get all of your apps into the folders, but once that’s done, you simply spin the wheel and then tap on a folder to see its contents. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work with Infinidock. Readers have pointed out that it works 🙂 Thanks!
Kirikae – Free: Technically an app switcher, but can be set up with a large set of Favourite apps that you can launch at most any time. It isn’t as flashy as Stacks or PogoPlank, but it gets the job done very quickly, and you can call it up at any time with a hardware key.
If you have any other ideas for managing apps on the iPhone, please share them with us in the comments!
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TAGS: springboard
