Ladies and gentlemen, ayra, one of the more polished tweaks that we’ve seen in recent weeks, has finally touched down on Cydia. This is a tweak for users of iOS 6, and among other things, brings an iOS 7 inspired Lock screen to the table. Along with its gorgeous Lock screen design, comes the ability to open Notification Center directly from the Lock screen to interface with toggles and notifications.
This is a tweak that has been developed by two well known figures in the jailbreak community — Surenix, the designer of many things, but best known for his legendary ayecon theme, and Bensge, a great developer in his own right, and the mind behind the uber-popular Velox. When you combine good design with good development, then the results are usually more good than bad, and that’s exactly the case with ayra. It may not knock your socks off like some of the other projects that these two have been involved with, but it’s a solid jailbreak tweak for those of us who are still proudly using iOS 6.1.x as our daily driver.
Of course, I previewed ayra a week ago, but now I’ve had the oppurtunity to play around with the completed version of the tweak. What did I find? Have a look past the break as it’s all broken down via our video walkthrough…
The settings found within ayra’s preference panel are very straightforward; you’ll find a kill switch for the tweak, and a list of toggles for the Notification Center Lock screen pull down, and that’s it. Using the tweak’s kill switch does require a respring, but thankfully, the ability to rearrange toggles has no such requirement. In total, there are 12 toggles included with ayra, along with a link to the stock Settings app. Each of these toggles can be easily rearranged using the drag handles located to the right of the preference panel.
After installing ayra, you’ll notice an immediate change to the look of the Lock screen. First and foremost, the slide to unlock and camera grabber nubs have been redesigned for a more modern look that’s much akin to iOS 7. Like iOS 7, the slide to unlock and Lock screen clock backgrounds has been ditched to provide more real estate for your wallpaper. It can’t be understated how big of a difference it makes to remove these background cells. As a result of ayra’s design, iOS’ Lock screen feels more free, open, and modern.
But those features play second fiddle to the biggest feature of them all — the ability to access notification Center from the Lock screen. Not only can you do that, but you’re also graced with the Notification Center toggles mentioned earlier. One of the things that I appreciated about ayra is its ability to know when you’re cycling through your row of toggles. When ayra senses that you’re doing so, it will prevent the device from going to sleep. Each of the toggles can be turned on or off using a simple tap gesture, and you can open to specific portions of the Settings app using tap and hold gestures.
Lastly, comes the ability to use tap gestures on your notifications. For example, if you tap on an email, you’ll receive a preview of the body of the message. Buttons appear at the bottom of each notification in order to launch directly into the Notification, or to remove the notification from Notification Center.
Needless to say, ayra is a tweak that’s a treat for iOS 6 users. The great tweaks for iOS 6 are becoming less and less common as of late, but it’s nice to see that the well hasn’t completely dried up prior to iOS 7’s public debut. If you decide that you want to try ayra, then head over to Cydia’s BigBoss repo where it can be downloaded for $1.99. Let me know what you think about it in the comment section below.
