Activator For iPhone

Activator is a must have iPhone hack for any iPhone jailbreaker. It allows you to control your iPhone with gestures and touches. This iPhone hack doesn't have an iPhone icon, and it can be either installed from Cydia independently or you might find it already pre installed after you install some other hacks such as SBSettings or multiflow.

Activator is free from Cydia and is simply the best iPhone hack of its kind. Although there is another iPhone hack called QuickDo that has similar functionality for $7.99, Activator is free and it has many more gestures and options.

It allows you to use your iPhone buttons and gestures like pinching in and pinching out, double tapping at the status bar, swiping your finger to the left or right and many more. You can then assign those iPhone buttons and gestures to many available tasks. For example, you can assign the sleep button to open iPhone safari, or iPhone email applications or you can double tap the status bar to show all running applications and so on.

Activator Settings:

Since there is no iPhone icon for this hack, all the features and options can be accessed from the iPhone settings app. Simply go to Settings, and then Activator to set it up. There are four main similar buttons that you can select from.

When you tap on any of the four buttons, you will get a similar iPhone screen setting, the only difference is where you can apply those gestures and actions.

On the iPhone there are three possible screens, the home screen, the application screen, and the Lock screen. Activator gives the option to choose any one of those iPhone screens independently and apply buttons and gestures to that specific screen only.

For example, suppose you want to assign the sleep button to open iPhone Safari only when you are at the home screen. If you press the sleep button while you are in an iPhone application screen or at the lock screen, iPhone safari will not start. It will only start if you press the sleep button while on the home screen.

It is very important to know where you want to assign your actions. Therefore, you can either select to apply your gesture Anywhere, or to one of the three iPhone screens. Each one of the four buttons gives you the same exact options. I usually select Anywhere so that my gesture or button will work no matter where I am. However, in some occasions I use the "at Home Screen" option. Therefore, I will cover the Anywhere option as the other ones are identical.

Tapping the anywhere button will open a list of all possible buttons and gestures that Activator supports.

There are so many options that you can assign to any of the iPhone gestures or buttons. Once you open a gesture for assignment, you will get a list of category with many tasks depending on what you have installed on your iPhone. Some of the available options require other iPhone hacks to be installed, and therefore you might not see them on your iPhone as displayed in those pictures.

There are two areas in Activator that I will cover. The first one is the possible Gestures and available iPhone buttons, and the second part is action or task assignment to those gestures or buttons.

The list Of Gestures and Buttons:

Headset Button:

When you tap the "Anywhere" button or on any of the other three buttons shown above, you will get a list of available Gestures and hardware buttons. Although the iPhone headphone that come with any iPhone or iPhone 4 has some buttons that allow you to play and pause iPhone music, with Activator you can assign those buttons in the the iPhone headset to do more than just iPhone audio controls.

You can assign the iPhone headphone buttons to do almost anything you like by assigning them to different tasks or actions. You can for example press the iPhone headset button once to restart your iPhone or start any iPhone application.

The Home Button:

The home button has some default actions, visit the iPhone tips and tricks page to learn about those default functions.

For example, a single click will always close any currently running application and sends you back to the iPhone home screen.

Another single click of the home button will send you back to the first home screen, and one more single click will send you all the way to the search page.

A double click of the iPhone home button opens the iPhone task switcher. While the iPhone music is running, a double click on the home button will display the iPod control pop up.

A short press and hold of the home button sends you to Voice Control. With Activator, you can modify each one of those three possible home button presses to your choices of tasks.

Double Tap Clock:

When you turn on your iPhone, you will get the lock screen which has the date and the clock. Activator allows you assign a double tap on the clock gesture to any of the available tasks. So you can double tap the clock when on the lock screen to open an iPhone application for example, or do any of the possible tasks.

Motion:

The next task is motion. The iPhone is built in motion sensor. Most of the time this iPhone feature is used in games where you shake the iPhone to shoot or jump or whatever action in the game. However, there is not really a useful function for it by default. Now with Activator, you can assign a useful function to it. For example, you can assign a shake to open your iPhone contacts, Shake to start your iPhone camera or shake to start any other task, the possibilities are endless.

Power:

The next task is called Power. This task is useful if you do some routine actions every day. It can save you time and make a great use of the power usb cable. Suppose that you usually plug your iPhone to charge your battery at night while turning the iPod to listen to music until you sleep. This feature of Activator is very handy in those situations.

You can assign the power function to open the iPod when connected to power. Therefore, once you plug your iPhone to the power to charge it, the iPod will open waiting for your action. Or maybe you like to use an iPhone browser to go to the internet while the iPhone is charging. You can assign that iPhone browser to open when you connect the iPhone to the usb cable, and you can then start browsing. You can assign a task when you connect and another task when you disconnect the power using the same method.

Sleep Button:

The sleep button on the iPhone has one simple function which is to put the iPhone to sleep. When you finish using your iPhone and want to turn it off, you would usually press the sleep button. All what it does is it turns off the display.

With Activator you can have two more actions to the sleep button. A Double Press, and a Short Hold in addition to the normal one normal press.

Now you can assign two more tasks to the sleep button. I assign AudioMemo to the sleep button Double Press.

Visit the iPhone Audio recording page to learn how you can start recording audio quickly using iPhone buttons.

Slide In Gestures:

Those three gestures are really cool. They might be a little difficult to master at the beginning, but once you get used to them, you will be able to quickly do many things by simply sliding your finger on the iPhone screen.

There are three sliding gestures at the bottom of your iPhone screen that you can get with Activators. Once you assign any of those gestures to an iPhone task, simply follow the procedure shown in the picture below to apply the gesture.

You can slide you finger at the middle bottom of the screen and slide up as shown by the green arrow. You can also slide your finger starting from the left side of the screen at the bottom and sliding up as shown by the blue arrow. The third gesture is the same but sliding your finger at the right side from the bottom and up as shown by the red arrow.

Pinching In and Out:

This iPhone gesture works only at the home screen where you have your iPhone folders and icons. But it is very useful when you want to start a calculator quickly for example.

Simply assign a pinch in or a pinch out which is similar to the iPhone zoom in and zoom out but on the home screen on the iPhone icons.

This gesture can be a little tricky as you must touch the iPhone screen with both fingers at the same time so you don't accidentally start an iPhone application if you touch an iPhone icon .

You can assign two tasks here. A pinch in which is zoom out, and an icon spread which is a zoom in.

Status Bar:

The Status Bar is the little bar at the top of the iPhone screen that shows the iPhone battery, the time, and the cell phone signal.

This is my favorite gesture, and is the most useful and used on my daily basis.

You get five different gestures that can be assigned to five different tasks. I assign MultiFlow to a double Tap to quickly see all running applications.

I assign a Tap and Hold to iNotified, and I assign Swipe down to mimic a single Home button press so that I can close any running iPhone application without pressing the physical home button. Swipe left is usually assigned to SBSettings, and I assign a Swipe right to LockInfo.

The Volume Buttons:

The volume buttons can be assigned to up to 6 tasks and you can get an additional task by using the Mute button.

The volume buttons are the most useful Activator assignment as there are not many buttons on the iPhone. Some of the following volume button presses are a little difficult to assign such as the pressing of both the up and down volume button at the same time or using the mute button. Therefore, I assign only four tasks to four button presses from the list below that I find easiest to use.

I use the press and hold on the volume up, press and hold on the volume down button, and I assign one task to both a press up and down or down and up. I also use the "Display Tap" which is tapping the speaker image after you press any volume button as shown below on the right picture.

The Activator List of Tasks:

Now, after you have learned about all the possible gestures and buttons available in Activator, lets look at what tasks you can assign to any of the gestures or buttons discussed.

In the following examples, you will learn how to assign a task to the double press of the iPhone sleep button which is located at the top right corner of any iPhone or iPhone 4 as shown in the picture.

For example, double press the sleep button to start multiflow, SBSettings, reboot or respring your iPhone, or start an iPhone application.

Assign Gestures to iPhone Hacks:

Activator communicates with other iPhone hacks from Cydia and allows you to assign different hacks to any of its gestures or buttons. For example, you can assign a double press of the sleep button to Multiflow, SBSettings, or a Flash light which are different iPhone hacks available from Cydia. Those hacks will only show up in Activator settings list if you install them on your iPhone or iPhone 4. They are listed at the beginning of the Activator task list.

iPhone Music Controls:

With the iPod tasks, you can assign gestures or buttons to Play/Pause a song or get the iPod controls pop up from whatever screen you are on your iPhone.

Simply tap the iPod task you like to assign to the sleep button double press.

Lock Screen:

With this task you can apply a gesture to show the lock screen or unlock your device. I don't really use this task at all.

Phone Contacts Controls:

This list of tasks allows you to assign gestures or buttons to show your contacts for example.

Or show your favorites or quickly show your phone keypad besides showing Recent and Voicemail.

In this example, a double press of the sleep button can be assigned to any of those available contacts control tasks.

You might be able to assign your favorite contact to the sleep button, so when you double press the sleep button, you could actually dial that favorite contact.

You can be very creative with Activator, you just need to find the right iPhone hack and apply it correctly. Look in Cydia for some contacts and quick dial hacks that can be assigned.

SBSettings Toggles:

Sbsettings is one of the most powerful iPhone hacks in Cydia, and now having Activator support to it makes it even more powerful and useful.

Now you can assign gestures or buttons to enable or disable bluetooth or WiFi for example. You can enable and disable 3GUnrestrictor, Or maybe you can control your iPhone screen brightness with your volume buttons!

You can be very creative in your assignment and combination of your iPhone hacks and tasks.

System Actions:

This list has very nice iPhone system tasks such as reboot and respring.

Therefore, you can assign the sleep button or a gesture to one of those system tasks to quickly apply it.

For example, if you feel that your iPhone is acting a little slow, one quick iPhone troubleshooting is to reboot or respring your iPhone.

With a respring assigned to the sleep button, simply double press and your iPhone will respring based on your assignment

Some of those system tasks are not available without jailbreaking your iPhone like respring and Safe Mode, while others are not quickly achievable by default.

Assign iPhone Applications:

This is one of the most useful feature of Activator. It allows you to assign any iPhone application to any gesture or iPhone button.

Activator categorize iPhone applications as two types. One is "System applications", while the other type is called User applications. Whatever the difference, you will be able to assign a gesture or a button to any of the installed iPhone applications. So you can double press the sleep button for example to open an iPhone application.

In this list, you will find all the iPhone applications that are installed on your iPhone whether they are from the App Store or from Cydia.

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