Software

How To Customise Your Jailbroken iOS Lockscreen

The default iOS lockscreen is little more than a glorified wristwatch; functional, but not very useful for much else than checking the date. Having a jailbroken iOS device opens up a Pandora’s box of possibilities, allowing you to add more info and a personal touch to the most basic of your phone’s functions: the lockscreen.

There are a lot of one-click themes already available on Cydia (the jailbreaker’s App Store), but they’re not always perfect. Today we’ll be loading up a sleek, easily customisable lockscreen that gives you the date, the time, and the weather in a stylish format. When you’ve finished, you’ll have a lockscreen like in the image above (which you can also customise if you wish).

Before You Start, You’ll Need…

  • A jailbroken iPhone
  • iPhone Explorer or some variantion
  • Cydia (should install when you jailbreak your phone)
  • From Cydia, you’ll also need to install:

    • Lockscreen Clock Hide
    • Winterboard
    • CleanStatus

    Step 1

    Download the theme appropriate for your current version of iOS.

    [iOS 4.1 and below]

    [iOS 4.2.1]

    Step 2
    Unzip the download and locate LockBackground.html. Open this with your plain-text editor of choice (Notepad/TextEdit will do), find “var locale: Los Angeles, California,” and input your own location. This will give you the weather for your area. Save and close.

    Step 3
    Open up iPhoneExplorer and navigate to Root/Library/Themes.

    Step 4
    Copy the entire unzipped theme folder into your “Themes” folder.

    Step 5

    Open up your Settings on your iPhone and go to Clock Hide. Enable Clock Hide. As the name suggests, this will hide the default clock on the lockscreen.

    Step 6

    Go to CleanStatus. Enable CleanStatus. Turn “on” Carrier Name and anything else you want to hide in your status bar.

    Step 7

    Go to Winterboard. Go to Select Themes. Select the theme we just set up.

    Step 8

    Go back to Winterboard. Respring.

    Ta-da! You will now have a customised lockscreen on your iPhone! It should look something like the image to the left. If you’d like to change the wallpaper for the lockscreen background, just overwrite the background.jpg with your wallpaper of choice in the theme folder.

    Sources & Other Starter Themes
    This is a basic starting point, but you can continue customising beyond this to fit your needs. For more resources, check out:

    If you’re a veteran iOS customizer, let’s hear what apps and hacks you turn to when you want to bend iOS to your whim in the comments.

Discuss

(5 Comments)
  • [–]

    Thomas Barbera

    Sunday, February 20, 2011 at 4:45 PM

    If you want Celsius, change

    var isCelsius = false

    to

    var isCelsius = true

    Reply
  • [–]

    Nicholas Bartlett

    Sunday, February 20, 2011 at 11:33 PM

    Is it possible to change the temperature to celcius?

    Reply
  • [–]

    Thomas Barbera

    Monday, February 21, 2011 at 3:38 AM

    I had a lot of trouble getting it to show the temperature for Perth, WA (as opposed to some random Perth it seemed to prefer). If you have the same problem, setting location to OCN|AU|WA|PERTH solves it, as it is a unique code. Other cities follow the same pattern (i.e. OCN|AU|NSW|SYDNEY)

    Reply
  • [–]

    Paddy

    Monday, February 21, 2011 at 7:57 AM

    Lockinfo every time. Love it.

    Reply
  • [–]

    Nathan Young

    Monday, February 21, 2011 at 12:03 PM

    How does all this jailbroken stuff go on the iPhone 3G? If I do stuff like this would it make my phone chug?

    Reply

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