New theme from yours truly!

Hey guys,

Just a quick update! Myself, brother, and a friend just released our first theme. It should be available soon on Cydia and Rock for download. It will be 1.99 and will be updated frequently.

Search for iTopple in either one! (Give it 24 hours from this post to show up!)

Thanks guys!

Tutorial for ALL iPhone/Mac users, free ringtones! =)

*Note: Any screenshots in my tutorials can always be clicked on in order to enlarge them.

A lot of Mac/iPhone users still ask me if there's a program they can download or purchase to make ringtones for their iPhone instead of using the built-in option in iTunes. For one, iTunes doesn't allow you to make ringtones out of EVERY song, and if you're like me, and all you're music isn't from iTunes, you'd have to buy the song again, not to mention pay to convert it to a ringtone. Lame.

Now I know there's software programs and jailbroken programs that have endless amounts of ringtones, but I'm also aware not EVERYONE jailbreaks.

Now keep in mind, this tutorial only works for Mac users, so sorry PC users (maybe it's time to make the switch, ha!) ;)

Mac users, you don't have to buy or download ANY additional software, it's built right in to your computer already; it's this nice little program called GarageBand, that pretty much comes standard on every Mac ever made.

The reason I like GarageBand so much is because you can mix it however you want. You have a lot more control. If you want to mesh different songs together, you can do that as well.

First open GarageBand, it will ask you to pick a template or whatever, select "New Project" - it doesn't matter what the heck you name it, I normally just keep song 1 or whatever it's defaulted to, and keep overwriting that file. You can change the name of the ringtone and Artist in iTunes once you import it into your ringtones tab.

Next, you want to open iTunes and find the song you want to make a ringtone out of and drag it into GarageBand.

The only thing you really have to familiar yourself with is Apple loops. Ringtones need to be under around 34-35 seconds for GarageBand to convert it to a ringtone, and it needs to be made with an Apple loop, which basically just selects a portion of the song to make a ringtone out of.

Alright, after you drag your song into GarageBand, you should see this (if GarageBand opened a virtual keyboard, just x it out). I also go to the counter and change it to time instead of measures (located on the bottom).



Now expand the view by clicking the tiny scissor icon in the bottom left hand corner of GarageBand (3rd icon from the left in the screenshot below):



Then you will see this:



This is where you will highlight areas that you want to cut out (if you choose to do this), otherwise you can just position an apple loop in order to select the part of the song you want to convert.

Now comes the Apple loop part, next to your play/pause/forward controls to the right, you should see this button:



Go ahead, don't be scared, click it! Now look at the top of garage band, you should now see a yellow bar that looks like this:



You can adjust the length of this bar, and slide it back and forth.

For example, say you just want the chorus of a specific song, just drag this bar to the chorus part, adjust it accordingly, and you'd be done (unless you want to add things like fade outs and what-not - if someone would like a more detailed, in-depth tutorial of GarageBand that goes into great detail about editing, splicing, mixing, etc, just let me know and I'll post that separate).

But it's still note-worthy, a fade-out can be accomplished by clicking Track --> Fade Out, and you'll then see a purple bar above your expanded view and you can click to add dots and drag them up and down to fade the volume in and out.

Also remember that your expanded view is where you would highlight parts you want to cut. I do this when maybe there is two parts of a song I want to fit in a ringtone, I'll find a good place to splice it and then remove the middle and just use a fade or mix to transition the two together.

Once you are done positioning your region and tweaking to your liking, you're ready to import into iTunes, simply go to share and send ringtone to iTunes like in the screenshot below!



GarageBand will ask you for a title, album etc, blah blah, just fill in random crap, you can change it to whatever you like in your ringtones tab in iTunes.

Now you're done and you can convert any songs you like to a ringtone without paying a dime or downloading new software!

Hope this helps a few Mac users. =)

GarageBand gives you a lot more control than free websites and software, plus you can mix songs together, just drag them both on the project. Mess with it and have fun! =)

This isn't just for jailbreakers, this works on stock iPhones too as its legitimate.

As always, thanks for reading.

-iMuggle

Update...

I know some people have asked about video tutorials. Currently my iMac has a vengeance against me and I attempted to do some video on the MacBook tonight. Well, apparently trial versions only let you record about a 1 minute video before screwing with your final product. LAME. Either way - I have to wait until I have a little extra cash to purchase a full version (or if anyone knows any freeware screencasting software, let me know!)

I plan on working on some basic tutorials tomorrow though, so I'll have some regular ones up Monday or so.

Thanks for all the e-mails and tweets. I really didn't think I'd get that much of a response from a blog, but hey, as long as you guys appreciate it and are happy, I'm happy. =)

- Ally (iMuggle)

Video tutorials and Requests

Hey guys,

Sorry I haven't posted any video tutorials. I actually sat down to do some tonight and the mic on my iMac is not working at all. Tried everything, so I'm calling Apple tomorrow. If I can't figure it out, I'll transfer all the stuff I need to the MacBook and do it from there, but I'm hoping it doesn't have to come to that as the framerate won't be as good as the iMac is a beast and I can bump it up.

Either way - if you would like to see a specific tutorial, shoot me an e-mail at iPhonebyiMuggle@me.com - I'm currently taking any requests and I'll try and get as many as I can up, whether it's a regular tutorial, or a video tutorial.

Hopefully I'll have something up by Sunday morning.

-iMuggle

Sources for icon packs and badges

A few people have asked me about icons and badges, and how to change them. I don't personally care for the default red badges, so that was the first thing I changed when I jailbroke my phone.

One place to get a lot of great icon packs is deviantart.com - just do a quick search for "iPhone icons" and you'll see tons you can download. I install them through SSH but if you have a file browser you should be able to drag and drop that way as well.

For badges, a great resource is modmyi.com - register for their forums, and a lot of people who are amazing with Photoshop post some really slick looking badges (as well as icons).

If you're an iPhone user, registering with modmyi.com is definitely a must. Some of the things you'll find on there will also be in the modmyi repository on Cydia, but a lot of it may not be.

The members over there are very helpful. I've even requested a few icons for themes in the past and within a few hours, someone makes them and posts them to the thread. Very good community.

If anyone else has any other places they download icon and badge packs from, please feel free to post it in the comments.

I'm working on a video tutorial as of how to create a basic theme/tweak themes and I'll make sure to include how to replace badge icons. Look for that soon.

Changing your root iPhone password

There was a recent story circulating around Twitter and several RSS feeds about someone hacking into iPhones and holding them hostage for a certain amount of money.

There's a simple way to avoid this. Change the root password to your iPhone. Anyone jailbroken already knows the root password to your iPhone is "alpine". And if you're anything like me, sometimes when you're done SSH'ing into your iPhone, you forget to turn openSSH access to your phone off through SBSettings.

Since I'm so forgetful, I just change my root password so it doesn't make it that easy for someone to hack into my phone remotely.

Changing your root password on your iPhone is actually quite simple and here are the steps (I'm not providing screen shots for this as it's a relatively straight forward process):

1. Download MobileTerminal from Cydia or your choice of installer if you don't already have it.

2. After you have MobileTerminal, launch it. Upon launch, you will see a command prompt.

3. Type su and hit return and you will then be asked for a password. This is logging you in as an administrator.

4. Your default password is alpine so enter that and press return again.

5. Now type passwd then hit return.

6. You should now be prompted to enter a new password. Enter your new password here and hit return.

7. You'll be asked to verify your new password, so do that, hit return, and you're done!

You now do not have the default alpine password anymore, which makes it harder for people to get into your phone using SSH vulnerabilities. In less than 30 seconds, you've protected yourself from several potential hacking threats.

Don't you feel better now?

-iMuggle

How to Upload themes to Cydia

I got a tweet the other day asking how to upload your own themes to Cydia.

If you're uploading a free theme that you do not want to sell, the easiest way to upload themes to Cydia is to submit them to modmyi.com, as they offer a very nice option for hosting your themes and apps.

Here's the link to submit:

Submit your package to Cydia via Modmyi.com

Alternately, you can create your own repo, instructions can be found at this link:

How to Create a Cydia Repo

The above guide is not mine. Modmyi.com published this Wiki with permission from MaXimus, it's original creator. So all credit for the Cydia repo tutorial goes to him. It really is a great step by step tutorial.

Jay Freeman (saurik) maker of Cydia also has a nice walkthrough of hosting repos on his own side found here:

saurik: how to host repos on Cydia

This isn't really a tutorial, but more of an information guide for those who want to host their own repos or upload themes to Cydia. I've had a few people ask me how to do this, and the more who know how, the more cool themes for all of us to download!

Hope it helps!

-iMuggle