Developer ashikase is helping out with updating categories app. ashikase is the author of the springboard addon CategoriesSB (as well as Backgrounder and other stuff).

Anyways, what we have here is a pretty heavy internal rewrite. The modifications are going to allow for some cool features in upcoming versions. The changes in this version are:

1. Internal rewrite of the config app
2. Transitions added in GUI
3. Reworked how folders are layed out internally. This will allow for apps like taptap 2 and taptap 3 to both be put into folders (hopefully).

We are posting the deb for beta testing for anyone that wants to test it.

Note that if you have CategoriesSB installed you should not try this beta. While the final version will work fine and be released with a CategoriesSB update, the beta does not support current CategoriesSB.

To use this beta, you must know how to use SSH. If you do not understand any of these steps (which are purposely sparse) you should wait for a release version rather than using this beta.

• Get categories beta here.
• SSH it to /tmp on your iPhone
• as root, run dpkg -i /tmp/categories_2.26.6.deb
• Manually respring or the ‘i button won’t work.

This beta will convert your existing category folders into a new format. If you uninstall the beta and reinstall categories from main repository, you will have to set up your folders from scratch again (or just wait for this to be final in the repository in which case you will not have to re-set up folders).

Developer Ashikase has written a Springboard add-on for Categories app. What this does is takes categories an moves the folders directly into springboard. The result is that everything loads very quickly, instantly more like. Also, the icons are rounded and badges are supported. Another interesting feature he has added is that if you make a category folder called “Recent” and leave it empty, it will track your last loaded applications. Pretty neat!

This extension to categories was not written by me. Ashikase has written other apps such as backgrounder. He is selling it for 99c in cydia store. If you are interested check it out. If you don’t want to fork out 99 cents, then you can still use categories as it is.

And yes, Categories is still in development and will remain free, but I have been distracted with other stuff recently. But there are plans to integrate some native support for this new extension in the GUI of categories app as well as a long list of things I’ve had planned since 1.1.x time frame…

I have updated Categories today addressing some stability issues in the configuration app. It’s still not perfect but it should at least run better. Hopefully sometime I will get enough time to really go through this thing.

The main issue was a pretty substantial memory leak in the configuration app. What would happen was springboard would detect a low memory state and shut the app down. The then on close, the app would respring. The respring would not have enough memory to complete and springboard would freeze up the device. I have done a lot of work on this, but there is still some smaller memory leak left. The launchers are fine so the hassle is just setting up the folders the first time. I have also removed the respring when low memory state is detected so hopefully it will prevent the freezes.

v2.23
• Fixed issue where users behind a proxy had the app close and safari open in some cases.
• Worked on memory usage. Fixed a large memory leak. (There is still a memory leak in the configuration part of the app, but it’s not as big. I hope I get time to fix it in the near future).
• The iPhone 2.1 and newer froze up when trying to respring with less than 7MB RAM. When memory got low, springboard would kill the app causing it to respring and freeze up. The respring flag should now be cleared in most cases when memory gets this low.
• The app will now detect if it gets closed due to low memory and allow you to continue your editing where you left off.
• Memory free and respring state are now in the status bar while the app is running