Customize iOS Notification Banner, Alert & App Switcher Animations With Animer
Cosmetically speaking, iOS has remained largely the same since it was introduced back in 2007. If you believe this makes Apple’s mobile operating system boring and stale, you can always jailbreak your device, use Dreamboard or Winterboard and make it look like the illegitimate child of Android, Windows Phone and iOS itself. We don’t honestly like that sort of mutation, but we do like and recommend playing around with smaller user interface tweaks to make more subtle changes. With that thought in mind, we’ll be discussing yet another tweak today that helps you personalize certain system animations in iOS. Check it out after the jump.
Developed by Hashbang Productions – the people behind previously featured MapsOpener, BrightVol, and FlagPaint – Animer allows you to customize animations for your notification banners, notification alerts and the multitasking app switcher.
Once installed, Animer’s myriad of animation customization options can be configured from the Settings app. You can change four things about each user interface element: change how it slides in, fades in, zooms in or out, and of course, the overall speed of the whole animation. After you have picked your options, you can immediately preview the animation by tapping “Show Test Banner” or “Show Test Alert” option.
We tested the tweak on an iPod touch (fourth generation) running iOS 6.1. It worked perfectly and lived up to all of its claims. We really appreciated how the tweak applied these animations without necessitating a respring.
Our only real gripe with Animer is that it is just not as powerful as some other, similar tweaks we have covered in the past. Here’s hoping the developers will include support for more UI elements and transitions.
If you are looking for even deeper animation customization options, check out DisplayCandy. While Animer changes banners, alerts and App Switcher animations, DisplayCandy lets you change animations for launching/closing apps, and switching between apps. Although we haven’t tested the two together, they should theoretically work fine.
You will, of course, need to be jailbroken in order to use Animer. Use the search bar on our page to find jailbreak guides for your version of iOS.
Animer is available as a $0.99 download from Cydia under the BigBoss repo. It supports iOS 6 only – which reminds me, be sure to check out our list of best, free iOS 6 Cydia tweaks to find more ways to customize your iOS device’s look and feel.
