I’m actually not sure when Cydget was released, but most reports I’ve seen online are from about two weeks ago. The free framework was developed by Saurik, the guy behind that jailbreak App Store you might have heard of (Cydia, I think it’s called). There aren’t all that many cydgets as of yet, but the […]
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Quick Look and How To: Cydget, jailbreak widgets on your iPhone lockscreen

Dec 10th 2009 by
SpinCD cydget

SpinCD cydget

I’m actually not sure when Cydget was released, but most reports I’ve seen online are from about two weeks ago. The free framework was developed by Saurik, the guy behind that jailbreak App Store you might have heard of (Cydia, I think it’s called). There aren’t all that many cydgets as of yet, but the concept could very easily take off and become the Winterboard of the lock screen. However, as Laurent pointed out in the comments, you’re trying this at your own risk. It worked alright on my 3GS, but I can’t predict what might happen with other setups.

Installation

You can find Cydget on Cydia, and the preferences will end up in the iPhone Settings. Once Cydget is installed it will basically take over the lock screen and may even override some Winterboard themes. The initial install comes with three example cydgets, but you’ll want to check Cydia or forums out for the bleeding edge goodies. Cydgets are managed similarly to Winterboard themes: you tick them off to activate them, but you can toggle through them by pressing the home button once on the lock screen.

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Default Widgets

The three widgets that come with the framework are Sample Photo (random camera roll pics),  Welcome (a text welcome to Cydget), and AwayView (your reggler ol’ lock screen). I’d do away with Sample Photo and Welcome immediately, but AwayView might be nice to keep around if you want to just look at your wallpaper sometimes.

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Cydia Offerings

The lockscreen widgets you’ll find on Cydia are an eclectic bunch. The selection includes standards like HTC Sense UI knock-offs, TicTacToe, Google Maps, a National Debt clock, and more. Just search for “cydget” in Cydia and you’ll see all 23 of them, though none of them are all that useful to me right now. I want my widgets to be very simple, unobtrusive things, since I prefer to do most iPhone tasks within an actual app.

Kickass Cydget from forums: SpinCD

I’m assuming these widgets will eventually make their way to Cydia through the MMI.com repository (which MacThemes seems to share), but for now you can get them straight from MacThemes. I found two amazing little iPod widgets — Papilio and SpinCD (based off of Papilio). There’s not enough documentation on how to get Papilio working for newbies like me, but I did figure out how to install SpinCD thanks to a guide over at Apple iPhone School. Just like my earlier guide on adding to Winterboard themes, it’s all about finding the right folder on your iPhone to throw a theme in. In the case of Cydgets, the directory is /System/Library/LockCydgets. All you need to do is throw the SpinCD.cydget in there and activate it in Settings -> Cydget on the iPhone itself.

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SpinCD probably spins a little too long (I’m trying to tweak this), but it’s definitely a stylish way to display your album art. One tap on the CD will display playback controls, which is good, since a double-tap of the home button won’t bring up playback controls when a cydget is loaded.

Default Behaviour

Whenever you wake your iPhone up from sleep the Cydget at the top of the queue will be loaded. There isn’t any such thing as s saved state, so even if I sleep my iPhone off while looking at the “AwayView” (bottom of queue by default), the device will wake with SpinCD loaded. I’m hoping a saved state option will be included in a later version of Cydget (0.9.3093-1 as of this writing), since that would really improve usability for me. It just doesn’t make sense for me to see album art or a blank CD case when there is no song playing.

Speed and memory

The widgets run pretty quickly on my 3GS, and I have about 106 MB of free RAM with SpinCD, the iPod app, and the 2Do task manager running as a backgrounded application. That’s still enough for me to load most any game I want without any repercussions. I have yet to try any battery life testing with the widgets installed, but I’m sure there’s some sort of price to pay for having a cool spinning CD show up every time I wake my iPhone up.

Know of more cydgets?

If you’ve got any other cydget tips or questions, hit us up in the comments!

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