13 
The much anticipated jailbreak application Dashboard X is now available over on the Cydia store, bringing Android-esque widgets to the main springboard of your iPhone.
Dashboard X grabs existing widgets made for Notification Center, and as you can see from the video above, it lets you plonk them down in any place you deem useful on the home screen. Various widgets are available, ranging from music controls to a NyanCat widget, and many more are being developed to specifically take advantage of the platform, such as a home screen Twitter app.
You can also move the widgets around the screen with a simple long press, putting them where you see fit, with a bunch of options tweakable in the Settings menu. Various offerings let you customise your phone to your heart’s content, and each widget integrates seamlessly making you wonder why Apple didn’t make it part of iOS originally. Dashboard X is available in the Cydia store from the ModMyi repository and costs around £1.25. [Dashboard X via Lifehacker, iDownloadBlog]
Thanks Darrell!
Ok so now this available on Jailbreak, how long before Apple integrates it into iOS proper, like they have done with other popular jailbreaks?
I’ve just installed this and it looks really good but there are two caveats:
1) The positioning isn’t pixel perfect, it seems to conform to a grid and that grid seems to put awkward spacing between the icons and the widgets.
2) The widgets ‘float’ on a layer above the icons, so if you put a widget at the top of your screen the icons would be underneath it instead of moving down to accommodate it.
Bugger off, Widgets!
Part of the reason I use an iPhone is that I don’t want all this battery and bandwith wasting nonsense.
What proportion of who have a phone running iOS 5 give a toss about live update of stock market values any time they want to view a notification?
My thoughts exactly, if you want to know the weather, open a fucking window.
Odd then that one of the advertised uses of Apples beloved Siri is to ask it about the weather. Please explain the difference (aside from the fact that it’s slower and less reliable).
Because unlike a widget, Siri is only queried when you actually ask for the information, rather then being something updated continuously for “at a glance” value.
They really couldn’t be more different.
Not relevant to the point I was making. I was responding to peacheyd’s comment “if you want to know the weather, open a fucking window”.
“Part of the reason I use an iPhone is that I don’t want all this battery and bandwith wasting nonsense” thats a bit of a stupid reason then. Exactly how much battery and bandwidth do you think an unused widget uses? I know people on Android who have loads of widgets and aI know people with none. Nobody is forced to use them, but it’s nice to actually have the choice.
I agree with this, nothing wrong with choice.
As long as there is always an option to switch it off, what’s the problem?
What I’d like to see is Apple open an API for widgets within the Notification Centre. Exactly the same as the stock weather and…stock app.
Apple apologists say that the iPhone is better just because. That’s why they want it to look like the Android phone they love to hate, but with worse specs. Wait, what?
Reasonably good idea, but there are so many UI/UX fails in that video!