This morning marks an historic release of our beloved jailbreak package installer. Cydia 1.1 represents a huge amount of time and effort spent fine-tuning the user experience and lots and lots of speed added. Amongst the new features and functionality, the speed in performing most tasks has improved tremendously. A noticable and welcome change includes an improved Search routine and results list, as well as a perisistent-feel for using Cydia on iOS 4+ where multittasking is commonplace. The Cydia homepage and Store features have also received tons of improvements over the last few months, so be sure to check it out. Nearly all parts of Cydia on both the front- and back-end have been tenderly nourished, adding up to an entirely fresh and exciting user experience that should appeal to all. It’s a new day, it’s a new Cydia. Let everyone know, the best just got better. Note that this was a community effort. This is where open source can really shine. Rather than only Saurik doing all the work on this one, we also had significant help from chpwn, Dustin Howett, and Ryan Petrich as well as countless hours put in by Saurik, himself.

Note: community sources are no longer packages. If you delete one, you will have no way to re-add it. You will have to manually delete the file /var/lib/cydia/metadata.plist and restart cydia.

Yep, 2.0 is out and jailbroken but there are not a lot of apps. Why not?

I wrote a post a while back here about what to expect with 2.0. But one highlight is that all apps need to be ported. This means the developer has to get a compiler working and rewrite code to get the app to work. Many developers are just getting the compilers going now and others are not even working on the issue. You should expect to see more apps in Cydia soon.

Question: Cydia sucks! When is installer coming out?

Answer: Usually this is being asked because there are so few apps in Cydia. This has nothing to do with installer though. Installer would be the same way. There are as many apps in Cydia as are available at this time. Cydia is actually very good. It is based on the apt packaging system which has been around for some 20 years.

Question: When is BossPrefs coming out?

Answer: I’m working on it. Unfortunately, BossPrefs uses a lot of undocumented hacks to work and many of these were changed in 2.0. I will put out a partially functional version in the next day most likely. EDGE toggle will come later.

Question: When is categories coming out?

Answer: See previous question.

Question: How do I add sources to Cydia?

Answer: There are no sources to add. Everything available is already inside Cydia. A source editor should be ready before you need it. Installer sources will not work in Cydia. Even if they did, there are no installer 2.0 sources.