Long before Apple came along and released iOS 4 and its slide out multitasking/app switching, a lovely lad going by the name of chpwn had already hacked together an (arguably better) solution, which he dubbed ProSwitcher. Essentially a clone of webOS’ cards system, it enabled jailbroken iPhones to quickly switch between and close applications that were running in the background.
ProSwitcher hasn’t been quite as useful since Apple pushed out their own solution — but chpwn is back, and this time he’s turning the table. Instead of Apple replacing something he built, he’s replacing something Apple built. His target? Voice Control.
Chpwn’s latest release, VoiceActivator, takes Apple’s built in Voice Control system and cranks it up to 11. Once you’ve jailbroken your phone and installed VoiceActivator, you can pop into the settings menu and throw in a voice action for just about anything your heart desires.
Some examples of possible voice commands:
- Launch an application by saying its name
- Assign a voice command to launch a pre-set website. (e.g. “Google” could launch.. Google.)
- Toggle Bluetooth, WiFi, and Airplane settings
- Reboot the device
- Take Screenshots
It’s still not quite as slick as Android’s voice offering, as it seems you’re limited to one or two words and the parsed data can’t be passed into an application — that is, you wouldn’t be able to say “Navigate to pizza!” and have Google Maps automatically load up a search for nearby pizza spots, as you can on Android.
Still, incredibly slick, and something to add to that list that Apple keeps finding ways to shorten: the list of reasons to jailbreak.