Cydia

Those red numbered badges on the iPhone home screen can be helpful, indicating new text messages or unread emails. Sometimes they can be irritating, especially when there's no easy way to tell an app to stop nagging you with its badge. One example is the Apple firmware update, which will appear as a badge on Settings until you update iOS.

Jailbreakers know that updating iOS to the latest version isn't always a good idea if you're interested in keeping your Cydia apps and tweaks. Thankfully, developer John Heaton has created the BadgeClear tweak so that annoying icon badges can be easily wiped away. No options or settings are added to your iPhone by the tweak, just added functionality on the home screen.

Jailbreakers who feel like they're missing out on the new iOS 5.1 camera icon can now add their own with a new jailbreak tweak. Camera Grabber for iOS 5 adds the camera shortcut to your iPhone's Lock Screen without having to upgrade to iOS 5.1. This eliminates the need to double tap the Home button to quickly access your camera.

If you do not want the new icon but would like an easier way to access your camera, you can always install the free tweak known as CamFast. This tweak allows you to use Activator actions like "Double Tap" to achieve the same result as using the camera shortcut.

iMessage may make it simpler to communicate between iOS devices and an OS X computer, but there are many file types that can't be transferred using the service as they are unsupported by Apple. For those iPhone users with jailbroken devices, this is no longer a limitation.

SendAny and ReceiveAny are two complimentary iPhone tweaks that open up the doors of iMessage to any file type you care to send. These files can be sent to and from jailbroken iOS devices or between an IOS device and an OS X computer running iMessage beta. Not only this, but SendAny includes built-in DropBox support to send files directly to online storage.

The new jailbreak tweak AppUpdateNotifier ensures you will never miss another app update by sending you a notification when one is available. This seems like a decent tweak for people who use a lot of apps and are tired of missing updates.

The tweak sends notifications via Apple's built in notifications system even when your device is locked or asleep. You can set AppUpdateNotifier to check for updates hourly, daily, weekly or monthly, and you can even choose to ignore certain apps by placing them on the "Ignore List."

If you're looking for a way to simplify your home screen on demand, DockHide can be installed for free from the Cydia jailbreak app store. This tweak provides an easy way to hide the home screen dock, leaving only the icons and a clean, organized look.

Hiding the dock does not affect scrolling left to right, and you can bring the dock back to the home screen at any time with a simple gesture. Gestures to hide the dock can be configured through a simple Activator function, such as triple pressing the home button.