I use my iPhone’s rear-facing LED flash as a flashlight all
the time for various tasks, but I’ll be the first to admit that Apple could and
should come up with a more intuitive way of toggling it on or off. In some
cases, using a software button to toggle the flashlight just isn’t good enough,
such as when you have wet or dirty hands.
Here to the rescue is a new free jailbreak tweak called SmartLight by iOS developer smokin1337, which spearheads a solution to these kinds of scenarios by letting users toggle the rear-facing flashlight on or off with the device’s hardware buttons instead.
Once installed, the tweak provides three primary functions:
- Toggle the rear-facing flashlight on or off by pressing the Volume Down + Power buttons
- Increase the flashlight brightness by pressing the Volume Up button while activated
- Decrease the flashlight brightness by pressing the Volume Down button while activated
I’m a huge fan of how the tweak is implemented because it doesn’t interfere with other button-related gestures throughout the operating system, such as adjusting the volume and using the volume buttons as camera shutter buttons. Furthermore, the tweak offers a seemingly ideal solution for situations where my hands might be wet or dirty and I need a light source, such as when working under the hood of my car.
SmartLight is intended to be an easy-to-use tweak that just
works, and for that reason, it doesn’t come with any options to configure. Once
you’ve installed it, you can begin using it immediately; if you don’t like the
tweak for any reason, then you’ll need to uninstall it to disable it.
SmartLight isn’t being hosted in any of Cydia’s default repositories, and we’re not sure if it ever will be. Instead, the tweak is available for free in the iDeviceHacked repository. To add it and download the tweak, you’ll need to follow these steps:
1) Launch the Cydia app and go to the Sources tab.
2) Tap on the Edit button and then tap on the Add button.
3) In the text field of the pop-up that appears, type in the following repository URL:
https://idevicehacked.com
4) Tap on the Add Source button and wait for the repository to load into Cydia.
5) Now you should be able to search for and install SmartLight from Cydia.
SmartLight works with all jailbroken iOS 11 and 12 devices and comes with our recommendation. Will you be trying it out? Let us know in the comments section below.
