When typing on any iOS device, you can perform text
editing-related actions by tapping and holding on a string of text. Among the
options you’re presented with are “Cut,” “Copy,” and “Paste,” among others. This
interface and the means of interaction hasn’t changed much over the years, and
many would argue that it feels antiquated.
Given the circumstances, iOS developer RestiveConch has just released a new jailbreak tweak called ActionBar that breathes new life into the process of interacting with these actions by integrating them all into the keyboard interface itself, as shown above.
ActionBar is more than just a pretty face, it’s also entirely user-configurable. You’ll find a dedicated preference pane in the Settings app after installation where you can customize it to your individual needs:
Here, you can:
- Toggle ActionBar on or off on demand
- Enable the iPhone X keyboard on all devices
- Adjust the ActionBar button positioning
- Enable custom colorization
- Choose a background color
- Choose a text color
The developer provides a respring button at the bottom of
the preference pane. You should use this button every time you make changes to
ensure that they’re appended to your handset.
Yes, ActionBar is an awesome jailbreak tweak, but there are
a few things you should know before using it, such as:
- Cut and copy actions only appear when text is
selected - Redo action only appears when the undo button
has been used - Bottom position only works on notched handsets
or on other handsets with the “iPhone X keyboard” feature turned on - Top position will replace the Predictive
keyboard
If you’re interested in augmenting your iPhone or iPad’s text-editing experience, then ActionBar is a great place to start. The tweak is available for $0.99 from Cydia’s Packix repository and works with all jailbroken iOS 12 devices.
Do you think ActionBar is a sleek replacement for the traditional
text-editing actions that appear in iOS? Let us know by dropping a comment in
the section below.
