Motion is a new jailbreak utility available in Cydia that makes your iPhone homescreen just a bit more interesting. While Motion may not add a ton of functionality to your device, it’s a fun tweak to play around with and show off to your friends. It basically adds transitions and effects to the movement to all of the icons on your springboard.

Motion is a tweak that makes your icons move. There are a whole bunch of settings you can use to liven up your home screen and make your icons dance around.

• Rotate: Make your icons rotate
• Scaling: Make your icons grow
• Skew: Make your icons tilt sideways
• Jump: Make your icons jump
• Transparency: Make your icons fade in and out
• Waves: Make your icons move in waves (vertical and horizontal)

You can use these settings alone, or in combinations.

Motion is already available in the Cydia store and will run on any iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch running iOS 4.x or higher. If you’re looking for even more tweaks and utilities to install, check out our guide to the best jailbreak applications for iOS 5.

• $1.00 — Cydia Store Link

More jailbreak resources:

• How to jailbreak guides
• Jailbreak apps, hacks, and themes
• General jailbreak and unlock help forums

New to iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad and curious how to set up a new ringtone, change a wallpaper, or arrange your app icons and folders, and otherwise personalize it and make it your own? Luckily these tasks can be completed quite simply, so let’s take a look at how they are done.

• How to change your wallpaper
• How to set a ringtone
• How to move icons
• How to create a folder

While this only covers some of the basics, it gives you a way to personalize your device and begin the process of making it your very own. Be sure to hop into the forums and show off your Home screen as well!

Wondering how to easily and quickly adjust the transparency of your icons or turn off labels? If you Jailbreak, you may want to check out Alphacon. Other apps like Winterboard allow you to do this but if you want something much more simple, Alphacon is it.

Once installed it will appear in your settings. You can choose to turn transparency on and off and further customize what icons you want the settings to apply to (home screen, dock, folders, etc). So if you’d like for your dock icons to not be transparent you can just tick off the transparency option for the dock. Same deal with icon labels. You can choose to turn them all off or just some. I personally still like to see my folder labels so I leave those on but turn off icon labels for everything else.

Alphacon is currently available in Cydia for free.

[Alphacon - Cydia Store Link]

Wondering how to make your home screen Safari bookmarks (Web Clips) look better? If the site you visited hasn’t made the effort to create a proper home page icon, all you end up with is a screenshot of the webpage. If the page is mostly text it can look awful on your home screen. Well the good news is there is a work around that will allow you to improve the look of that icon. We’ll show you how, after the break!

iOS lets you customize the look of your home screen bookmarks.

• First visit a page you want to bookmark to your home screen in mobile Safari.

• Tap the Bookmark button on the toolbar and you will be presented with the Add to Home Screen option
• If you add it to the home screen now, it will just take a zoomed out screenshot of the page and will look poor on your home screen.

• Before tapping on the Bookmark button, zoom into an area of the webpage that will look the best on your home screen. I zoomed into the picture of the Land Rover in this instance.
• Now tap on the bookmark button and select add to home screen.

• The icon now has the area of the screen that you zoomed in on and it is a huge improvement to the previous example!
• It is far from being a perfect solution as the page will open up again zoomed in on the area you selected but it does improve the look of your webpage bookmark icons dramatically and is very simple to do!
• It also behaves strangely sometimes changing the icon after you have visited the site; it does however seem to revert back to the right icon after a few minutes……weird!

Bonus Tip: It’s really much better if a site creates a special, custom icon for home screens, so if you come across a site that hasn’t yet, just send them over to TiPb. We’ve got a complete how-to written up to show them how to make one for their site!

So there you have it, a simple way of improving the look of Safari bookmarks on your home screen.  If you have any other home screen tips for us, let us know in the comments!

Tips of the day will range from beginner-level 101 to advanced-level ninjary. If you already know this tip, keep the link handy as a quick way to help a friend. If you have a tip of your own you’d like to suggest, add them to the comments or send them in to news@tipb.com. (If it’s especially awesome and previously unknown to us, we’ll even give ya a reward…)

Wondering how to get your hands on the PNG files Apple uses for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad interface icons? If you’re a developer running Xcode and for some reason you can’t use the default controls but want your custom controls to look just like them, you’re in luck, UIKit-Artwork Extractor by 0xced will get you everything from the action button to the trash can, Emoji to the glossy effect.

UIKit Artwork Extractor extracts all the artwork and emoji symbols contained in UIKit into png files.

In order to extract Retina Display @2x high resolution images, choose the Hardware > Device > iPhone 4 menu in the iPhone Simulator.

The png files are saved into ~/Desktop/UIKit Artwork Extractor-version where version is the SDK version.

Really clever. Hit the link below to grab it, and let me know how it works for you.

[UI-Artwork Extractor via @marcoarment]

Tips of the day will range from beginner-level 101 to advanced-level ninjary. If you already know this tip, keep the link handy as a quick way to help a friend. If you have a tip of your own you’d like to suggest, add them to the comments or send them in to news@tipb.com. (If it’s especially awesome and previously unknown to us, we’ll even give ya a reward…)

A while back on iPad Live, we got to talking about how we often judge and app by its icon — if the icon is bad, or even just not great, we don’t buy it (ahem, Chad!). There are just so many apps in the store it becomes an easy way to eliminate some. If the developer doesn’t care enough to make a fabulous icon — the thing everyone sees when buying and launching their app — what else don’t they care about?

Are we being snobs? Superficial much? Missing out on great apps just because the developer was better at coding than they were design? Or do great icons sometimes hide crappy apps?

How important is the icon to you when deciding whether or not to spend your money on an app? Do you judge an app by its icon? Be truthful now!

[Image via Cocoia icon resource PSD]

MacRumors says one of their readers did some digging through iTunes 10.2 and found that a white Verizon iPhone has been added to the previously existing white GSM (AT&T) iPhone 4 version.

[The icons] would be displayed in the Summary window within iTunes when the device is connected. The image is distinct from the original white iPhone 4 icon and clearly shows the antenna break on the top right side of the CDMA version that is not present in the GSM version.

Apple has previously said the white iPhone 4 would ship in Spring and recently Apple SVP of Marketing Phil Schiller repeated that timeline.

No word yet on whether or not the flying unicorn wallpaper can be clearly seen in the icons…

[MacRumors]

There’s a Jailbreak bug that affects Springboard (the Home Screen system on iPhone and iPad) and causes your icons to go fuzzy and disappear. Depending on which version of iOS 4 you’re on, and which Jailbreak tool you used (limera1n, greenpois0n, redsn0w, etc.) you may or may not experience it or be able to replicate it, but if you do we have a simple if temporary fix for you after the break.

Though the disappearing/fuzzy icon bug isn’t much more than a annoyance — you can still use the icon in question — is also quite easy to go around.

You can tell if you have the problem simply by swiping quickly from Home Screen to Home Screen. If you you have the bug, some icons will disappear or turn fuzzy. To fix it, just swipe some more and they’ll eventually re-render.

Again, this bug is not incapacitating for your iPhone but it is a bit disconcerting when you see one of your icons has disappeared. (Luckily the name remains under the icon so you can still figure out which app it is).

This bug seems to have started after iOS 4.0 came into effect. We will have to see if it is still in effect in iOS 4.3.

Effect

• Your icons will appear fuzzy and difficult to see.

Cause

• Swiping rapidly through Home Screens

Fix

• Keep swiping until the icons re-render properly.
• If you’re desperate, restore your iPhone and re-Jailbreak with a more recent tool

If you’ve had this problem let us know which version of iOS you’re using and which tool you used to Jailbreak. If you’ve come up with any better fixes, let us know in the comments!

3DBoard uses the iPhones accelerometer and gyroscope to present a “3D” view of the Springboard/Home Screen icons and it looks pretty nifty. Sure it’s pure eye candy and not as functional a tweak as SBSettings or LockInfo, but cool has to count for something, right?

It’s coming to Cydia soon and will cost $4. Anyone going to grab it?

Video after the break!

[YouTube via Gizmodo]

Ever hated an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad app icon and wondered how you could change it, or gotten tired of a low-res icon on your gorgeous Retina Display and wished you could set up something custom? Well if you’re jailbroken and running Winterboard, you can. We’ll show you how after the break!

Winterboard lets you customize many aspects of your iPhone and iPad’s appearance, including custom icons. Custom icons will not replace the actual image files and can be turned on and off through Winterboard. As icons are usually part of a theme, you should know that only icons for apps purchased through the App Store are automatically skinned by most themes. iOS apps such as Photos, Compass, Settings, etc. will not be automatically skinned and must be specially done for each theme. All jailbreak apps (apps from Cydia) will likewise not not be auto-skinned and must be made to fit your theme if that is what you are trying to accomplish.

Before we get started you will need to SSH into your phone and have Winterboard installed. SBSettings and iFile are greatly recommended but not absolutely necessary.

Creating Your Theme

• Go to: /private/var/stash/Themes
• Create a Folder labeled “Custom Icons.theme”

• Inside that folder, create a folder labeled “Bundles” – All your icons will be put into this folder which will direct winterboard to skin them accordingly.

Finding Icons to Skin

There are online databases for this information, but since icons and apps are often updated, this method will show you how to find them on your own.

The best method is to use SBSettings and click the “More” icon.

• Scroll to the bottom and click on “App Folders”
• Click on the app you are looking to skin, and mark down the folder name.

• Use iFile or your SSH browser and go to the location you marked down.
• Inside that folder there will be another folder, usually the name of the app with “.app” after it. Open that folder.

• Find Info.plist and open it. You will be looking for a line labeled “CFBundleIdentifier” and the string directly below it. Mark down the name of the bundle listed in the string, it will look something like “com.company.appname” This will be the name of your bundle folder that you will be making.

• In the same folder where you found Info.plist, find the icon you wish to replace. This step is often tricky, and might require trial and error until the correct file name is found. Usually the icon will be labled Icon.png or Icon@2x.png if it is a retina quality icon. Remember this file name is case sensitive.

• Go back into your Custom Icons.theme/Bundles folder and make a new folder labeled with what you found to be the CFBundleIdentifier (i.e. “com.company.appname”). Your Icon will go here. Now that you have both the icon name and the bundle name, its time to make an icon.

Making Icons

• If you are making icons for a device with a Retina display you can make them 118×120. If on a non-retina display, they should be 59×60. I use Adobe Photoshop to make my icons from pictures I find on the web. It does not matter what size the original icon is. Only what device you are currently on. You can skin a non-retina quality (59×60) icon with a retina quality (118×120) icon.

• Once you have your icon, you need to label it exactly like the icon you are skinning, again it must be case sensitive.

• Place the icon in your newly created bundle folder.

Using Winterboard to Implement Theme

• Open Winterboard and make sure the Custom Icons Theme is checked and above any other theme, as themes will override each other depending on which theme is listed above the other.

• Your device will respring and your icon should now appear. If it did not appear, double check the icon and bundle name to make sure they are exactly the same as the ones you have created.

I hope you found this tutorial helpful and remember to have fun! If you have any questions ask in comments or get expert help in our Jailbreak Theme Forum!

Tips of the day will range from beginner-level 101 to advanced-level ninjary. If you already know this tip, keep the link handy as a quick way to help a friend. If you have a tip of your own you’d like to suggest, add them to the comments or send them in to dailytips@tipb.com. (If it’s especially awesome and previously unknown to us, we’ll even give ya a reward.)

Just get a new iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad an curious how to rearrange your app icons and put your favorite programs exactly where you want them for faster, easier access? Maybe you want Facebook right up front and that default stock app to get lost? It’s easy to do and we’ll show you how, after the break.

• From the iPhone or iPad home screen, touch and hold any icon until all of the icons start to jiggle (this is called “jiggly mode”)
• Once they’re jiggling, just touch an hold an icon and then move it around the page until it’s exactly where you want it.
• If you drag an icon to the extreme left or right of your home screen, almost off the edge, you’ll scroll to the previous or next page and be able to place the icon on a new or different home screen.
• You can even drag apps out of the dock that you might not use that often and put more frequently used apps in the dock (like replacing iPod with Messages for frequent SMSers).
• If you drag an icon on top of another icon, you’ll start a new folder. You can put up to 12 apps in an iPhone folder and 20 apps in iPad folder. (And yes, you can put folders in the dock as well!)
• If you tap the X on top of a jiggling icon, you’ll delete it so make sure you don’t do that unless you really want to!
• Once you’re done, click the home button to exit jiggly mode.

Bonus tip: If you want to rearrange a lot of icons all at once it can be a lot faster to plug your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad into your Mac or Windows PC and do the heavy lifting in iTunes. Then, when the virtual screen in iTunes is just the way you want it, click to sync and all the changes will be carrier over.

Bonus Jailbreak tip: If you are jailbroken you can use Gridlock to leave blank spaces and otherwise more precisely place your icons.

If you have any questions, leave them in the comments. If you’ve already rearranged your iPhone or iPad apps and found something that really works well for you, let us know!

Tips of the day will range from beginner-level 101 to advanced-level ninjary. If you already know this tip, keep the link handy as a quick way to help a friend. If you have a tip of your own you’d like to suggest, add them to the comments or send them in to dailytips@tipb.com. (If it’s especially awesome and previously unknown to us, we’ll even give ya a reward…)

A lot of people are curious how to theme their iPhone’s — not just change the wallpaper but customize the whole look of the interface, including icons, menu bars, fonts, and more. Enter Winterboard, a free Jailbreak app you can download for free via Cydia.

Winterboard is a necessary utility to install themes and most customizations. Many veteran jailbreakers will remember the days of Summerboard as well. Winterboard took its place a few years back and improved upon several things. When you install a theme, all the components will show up in Winterboard.

Depending upon how a theme developer decided to bundle their theme, you may have only one package in Winterboard, or you may have several. I personally prefer when developers separate theme elements. Since Winterboard works as a hierarchy, I can select a theme and if I don’t like the sounds, I can download a sound pack I “do” like and apply that in Winterboard. The key is to move it above the main theme so it overrides the sounds you don’t want.

I highly suggest jailbreakers become familiar and comfortable with Winterboard. If you do, there is no limit to what you can do to your phone and you’ll be able to tweak and customize even the littlest details of your springboard.

If you want to more, check out our complete guide to Jailbreak basics. If you need help, head on over to our Jailbreak Themes Forum! If you’re a veteran themer already. let us know some of your favorites!

Gridlock is an iPhone Jailbreak hack that will allow you to setup app icons on your home screen in a manner that doesn’t interfere with your wallpaper or just let you create an awesome pattern — the choice is yours. It is easy to use, all you have to do is hold down on an icon to make your apps jiggle like you always do and then move them around anywhere you want.

That’s it, no app, no settings, just click and drag your icons anywhere! Best of all it’s just $0.99 in Cydia, thanks Chronic Dev-Team member chpwn!

by Brian

Working on an icon for your new iPhone 4 or iPad app? Fresh from WWDC 2010, Cocoia have updated their PSD resource file to include not only the original iPhone/iPod touch and iPad dimensions, but the new iPhone 4 114×114 Retina Display resolution as well:

Again, if you appreciate it, tweet this to help your fellow designers and developers make nicer icons for iPhone 4 (and beyond).

As someone who admittedly skips over anything with a poor icon in the App Store, here’s hoping Cocoia’s generosity — and passion for iconography — is widely embraced.

Go grab it via the link directly below.

[Cocoia]

Big week for Apple patent pr0n, as in addition to getting a patent for the original 2007 iPhone 2G design, Steve Jobs, Jonathan Ive, et al are not being granted a patent for the 2008/2009 iPhone 3G/iPhone 3GS design as well. And not content with hardware alone, Apple has filed for patents on almost all their Home Screen and App Store icons (we couldn’t find Calendar, which means its either too generic or we just couldn’t find it).

So fair warning to all the iClone manufacturers without prior art or $40 billion in the bank — start visual differentiation plans now.

As to the icons, at almost 1000×1000 pixels and with detail to match, it shows just how obsessive Apple is when it comes to their products and while other OS and devices may use the same app-launcher paradigms, they don’t seem to be slaving over every last detail — in art, consistency, multitouch panel quality, and touch detection software quality — Apple is putting in. Just amazing. (Except for those diagonal stripes).

Gallery after the break!

[Patently Apple, GoRumors via Engadget]

If you’re interested in iPad design or development, the internet is already offering up resources for you, including interface recommendations, icon templates, and galleries of Apple examples. And why not? The same people who love every pixel of interface on the iPhone are finding 1024×768 reasons to pour over the iPad’s beefy new canvas as well.

First up, Gizmodo highlights some of Apple’s new iPad Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) which suggest developers “think different” and not just big when it comes to the iPad. They have to “just work” no matter how a user holds the iPad, portrait or landscape, and they should remain just as focused and uncluttered as iPhone apps. It should be easy to share, both in terms of several people using the app on the same devices, and moving data back and forth from the app. Real world look and feel is encouraged; making contacts look like a book gives it tangibility. Multiple multitouch gestures are your friend (there’s a reason NOVA let the player touch the screen and turn the door latch). And while it is a computer, it shouldn’t present the user with file-systems or other computer management tasks.

Next, Cocoia has been generous enough to share a downloadable Photoshop PSD template for iPhone and iPad icons, everything from giant 512×512 to standard iPad and iPhone sizes, to iPad Spotlight and menubar variants.

Last but not least, developer Frasier Spears has painstakingly assembled a Flickr gallery of every iPad UI element he could get his screen-shot on, and presented them with commentary. No better way to get started than by checking out what Apple’s done so far.

Ever wanted to know how to change the icons of a particularly ugly app? Well, if you’re Jailbroken and have SSH access you’re in luck! Resident theming genius, Ally (iMuggle on TiPb Forums and in the Twitter) has begun collecting her excellent tutorials into one easy to browse place. Here’s a sample:

you need to know how to do a few things in order to do this. After jailbreaking, you need to know how to SSH into your phone. If you’re not familiar with SSH, you need to get familiar with that first. *Note: Unless you feel completely comfortable doing this, I don’t recommend it. Point being, SSH’ing will give you access to ALL of your iPhone’s core files, so deleting/editing certain files could be disastrous if you don’t know what you’re doing. If you’re still reading, and you’re okay with all of this, continue on.

So, fair warning, that’s why we call these iPhone Ninja tips. They’re not for the casual user — hard core only.

If you’re interested and eager, however, give Ally’s tutorials a look and let her (and us!) know your results.

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard does indeed have some “refinements and enhancements” for the iPhone, namely a brand spanking new iPhone logo in System Preferences > Network when you’re tethered via the iPhone.

Yeah, okay, we know — AT&T users need do nothing but raise their fists and yell out a “KAAAAAAHHHHHHNNNN!” like scream at the gaping lack of functionality they’re still enduring. But at least you can take the smallest, most infinitesimal comforts in knowing that — if you’re a Mac — you’ll get a spiffy new icon to go with your no doubt exorbitantly overcharged tethering option.

If it ever becomes available.

[Via jpcaine]

Daynah from PHP-Princess.net just couldn’t abide the meager 11 pages and paltry 180 apps provided by iPhone 3.0, so she went about forcing Apple’s SpringBoard home screen manager to give her more. How did she do it?

Check the link above for the details, but the but gist is filling up more than the default 11 pages (additional apps will still be hidden), then moving built-in apps to the last spot, then moving in an additional icon to force a built-in app off the 11th screen, the downloading an app to fill in the empty spot, and… presto — 12th page.

Ninja level work-around to be sure, but if you can’t live with 180 visible apps, and decide to experiment, let us know your results!

Way back in the elder days of iPhone 3.0 Beta 5, there was some discussion on Twitter about how apps would have an incorrect icon, or would be missing an icon altogether. Since the iPhone 3.0 betas were private and not public, TiPb didn’t post about it as that’s just not how we play cricket. Private betas will have bugs, get those bugs reported, and hopefully have those bugs fixed by the time the software goes into general availability.

However, TUAW highlights that this particular bug is still biting iPhone 3.0, even in the release version. Now, as then, if you have an app that’s missing an icon or has the incorrect icon, you can try to reboot your iPhone, delete the app and download or sync it back on, or wait for Apple to fix it in a 3.0.x update.

Meanwhile, you can let us know the funniest app mishaps iPhone 3.0 is giving you in the comments below.

(Mine is the little AIM dude swiping my 1Passwords Pro!)

Confession: Jeremy can’t believe we’re posting this, but after a bunch of forum questions, email queries, and a mini Twitter ‘splosion, we figured we’d put this up as a public service message to the Jailbreak community.

First: don’t panic.

Second: those strange little black icon badges that have suddenly popped up on your Phone, Email, iPod, and perhaps other apps? Yeah, that’s because you installed Backgrounder, and that’s how Backgrounder shows you which applications, built-in or user-enabled, are currently running background tasks (multitasking).

Third: enjoy.

Mac and iPhone icon designer Sebastiaan de With of Cocoia takes app designers to task for not making their icons better match the quality and look of Apple’s built-in apps. Says de With:

A lot of professional designers get it wrong as well, and I can understand; it’s truly very hard to make an icon that looks as great as one from Apple’s bunch and blends in with the rest. I don’t mean to be an icon snob; I like diversity in my icons, and especially creative freedom. It’s more than just annoying, however, when creative and diverse motifs look extremely alien to their environment.

Part of the blame is placed on Apple who’s iPhone HIG (human interface guidelines) provide a mere 378 words on icon design, with examples that are sub-par. But de With isn’t just complaining — he’s doing something about it. Enter: Composition:

Sean Patrick O‘Brien and I are working on the very first Mac application that will be released under the Cocoia ‘brand’: Composition. Composition allows you to take any image and get a pixel-perfect preview of iPhone’s default effects at regular home screen size and Settings/Spotlight small icon size. It also lets you look at your icon in a virtual home screen to achieve a native look (and yes, both iPhone and iPod touch home screens will be represented), and export it for further usage on websites and other materials.

Best of all, it’s going to be free.

Check out the pre-announcement for details.