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Aug 20

Pitseleh: A Beautiful Theme for Jailbroken iPhones

Posted in: Apple, Hacks, iPhone, jailbreak, Phones, Today's Chili

Did you take our advice and jailbreak your iPhone? Here’s another good reason to hack away at your beloved device: themes. By downloading some unauthorized freeware through Cydia, you can give your iPhone user interface a makeover if you’re getting sick of Apple’s black and bubbly aesthetic. I installed a slick, old school theme called Pitseleh. (Admittedly, the name caught my eye because it’s the title of my favorite Elliott Smith song.)

If you’re convinced by the beautiful screenshots above and below, be warned: The procedure isn’t as easy as installing a single app and choosing the theme. You have to download five pieces of software, and there’s a manual part of the setup, too, requiring some finger work. The entire setup takes 30 minutes, and I followed an extremely helpful guide at Apple iPhone School.

Another forewarning: The theme is somewhat impractical, and more for the sake of showing off. It breaks your home screen into six categories (Phone, Text, iPod, Web, Games and Apps), and you have to follow the instructions exactly to match the theme’s skin, so there isn’t much room to customize. The most annoying part is that the Apps category is all the way on the right, requiring five swipes to access it to launch a third-party app such as Tweetie. You won’t be able to find your apps through Spotlight search anymore, either, since they’re stuffed in a category folder. Long story short: If you’re a “power user,” don’t bother. I mainly did this for fun, and I’ll likely uninstall it in the next week.

Update: As our readers EPICpod and markii point out, there’s a free app to enable Spotlight search for categorized apps in this theme. It’s called SpotBright, also available through Cydia. It works great and completely fixes the problem!