Complete Guide to Speeding Up Cydia on the iPhone, iPad & iPod

[djmalice]

For jailbreakers and unlockers Cydia is an absolute must have tool. It is a fantastic bit of free software with tons of potential and features but with one major flaw. Its never ending slow speed. This is a guide to speeding up Cydia as fast as is possible.

Deselect Categories: Cydia hosts a lot of different categories of files and software. Most of them you will never want, use or be interested in. For example, I have no interest in themes, graphics or ringtones. The three of them combined, take up an almighty amount of time and space on Cydia. For you, it may be other things.

To disable categories from loading or updating open up Cydia, select 'Sections'. On the upper right hand corner is 'Edit', select this. Now go through each and every category selecting 'off' for the ones you don't want. At the end of this, select 'done'. Now, you will notice that Cydia is not only faster at loading but requires less RAM, changes load much faster and you don't have to scroll through hundreds of things you don't want or need.



Remove & Block Adverts: Cydia is a free app which is funded through advertising. It is these cumbersome adverts that take up a load of loading time when selecting files and apps in Cydia. This dramatically reduces loading time.

To remove and block adverts in Cydia you need to browse and edit the system files within your iPhone (not as dangerous or difficult as it sounds). I highly recommend iPhone PC Suite, but you can use SSH or any other PC/Mac application that allows you to go through system files on your iPhone.

1 - Go into your device and navigate to /Applications/Cydia.app/package.js and search for the following line;

if (depiction == null)
2 - Replace it with

if (depiction == null || true)
3 - Save it.

4- Now, go to /etc/hosts opening the hosts file (with a text editor)

5 - Insert the following two lines of code

127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com
127.0.0.1 media.fastclick.net
6- Save the hosts file and then reboot your iPhone. You've now disabled and removed advertisements from Cydia.



Remove unnecessary repositories: Cydia comes with default repositories. Many of them I find pointless to my needs. To speed up startup times for Cydia remove the ones you do not want or need.

To remove these repositories open up Cydia. Select 'manage'. Select 'packages'. The default ones you will (probably) see are; BigBoss, Cydia Community Sources, Dev-Team, ModMyi.com, Saurik, Ultrasn0w and ZodTTD. All of them except for BigBoss are unnecessary in my opinion. Remove the ones you no longer want except for BigBoss and Ultrasn0w. To do this select each one and select 'modify' and then 'remove'.

If you do these simple things Cydia will be much faster than before. Why put up with the cumbersome loading times?

[Trees415]

Nice post, second one was really useful to me, thanks bruddah.

[mrjayd]

For jailbreakers and unlockers Cydia is an absolute must have tool. It is a fantastic bit of free software with tons of potential and features but with one major flaw. Its never ending slow speed. This is a guide to speeding up Cydia as fast as is possible.

Deselect Categories: Cydia hosts a lot of different categories of files and software. Most of them you will never want, use or be interested in. For example, I have no interest in themes, graphics or ringtones. The three of them combined, take up an almighty amount of time and space on Cydia. For you, it may be other things.

To disable categories from loading or updating open up Cydia, select 'Sections'. On the upper right hand corner is 'Edit', select this. Now go through each and every category selecting 'off' for the ones you don't want. At the end of this, select 'done'. Now, you will notice that Cydia is not only faster at loading but requires less RAM, changes load much faster and you don't have to scroll through hundreds of things you don't want or need.



Remove & Block Adverts: Cydia is a free app which is funded through advertising. It is these cumbersome adverts that take up a load of loading time when selecting files and apps in Cydia. This dramatically reduces loading time.

To remove and block adverts in Cydia you need to browse and edit the system files within your iPhone (not as dangerous or difficult as it sounds). I highly recommend iPhone PC Suite, but you can use SSH or any other PC/Mac application that allows you to go through system files on your iPhone.

1 - Go into your device and navigate to /Applications/Cydia.app/package.js and search for the following line;

if (depiction == null)
2 - Replace it with

if (depiction == null || true)
3 - Save it.

4- Now, go to /etc/hosts opening the hosts file (with a text editor)

5 - Insert the following two lines of code

127.0.0.1 pagead2.googlesyndication.com
127.0.0.1 media.fastclick.net
6- Save the hosts file and then reboot your iPhone. You've now disabled and removed advertisements from Cydia.



Remove unnecessary repositories: Cydia comes with default repositories. Many of them I find pointless to my needs. To speed up startup times for Cydia remove the ones you do not want or need.

To remove these repositories open up Cydia. Select 'manage'. Select 'packages'. The default ones you will (probably) see are; BigBoss, Cydia Community Sources, Dev-Team, ModMyi.com, Saurik, Ultrasn0w and ZodTTD. All of them except for BigBoss are unnecessary in my opinion. Remove the ones you no longer want except for BigBoss and Ultrasn0w. To do this select each one and select 'modify' and then 'remove'.

If you do these simple things Cydia will be much faster than before. Why put up with the cumbersome loading times?

mine has if (depiction != null)
is this what I change?

[Frizkie]

mine has if (depiction != null)
is this what I change?

I'd say no. != means not equal, == means equal. So if I had to guess, you're lookin' in the wrong place.

[Janet55]

hmm, nice read, thanks for contributing the helpful post.
I'd like to put into practice on my iPhone Hope this really can speed Up much~

[Shavon]

I'm on a 3G 4.1 update using iFile. I don't have that line in the code for the package.js file. I got the same one that other member got that's not equal and right below it, the code had "description" instead of depiction with the same code.

is it a 3G thing?
Thanks

[Trees415]

I'd say no. != means not equal, == means equal. So if I had to guess, you're lookin' in the wrong place.

Actually, that was the same for me, and I couldn't find the word "depiction" anywhere else in the file, so I changed that one, and it worked for me. IDK, maybe its a translation error, I made the changes in wordpad if I remember correctly, so maybe that's just how it shows up in whatever editor he's using.

[143voltron]

Great post,
I went in there and removed a majority of the catergories that I probably wont need.

[monticello]

Every time I try to change anything you said to change in iFile I get a popup saying "Error The operation couldn't be completed. (Cocoa error 513.)"

Any idea why this is happening?

Nevermind! I SSHed into it and changed them that way, worked perfectly, thanks for the tips!

[putosusio]

To remove and block adverts in Cydia you need to browse and edit the system files within your iPhone (not as dangerous or difficult as it sounds). I highly recommend iPhone PC Suite, but you can use SSH or any other PC/Mac application that allows you to go through system files on your iPhone.

1 - Go into your device and navigate to /Applications/Cydia.app/package.js and search for the following line;

if (depiction == null)
2 - Replace it with

if (depiction == null || true)
3 - Save it.

... I'm having a bit of an issue with this part. I can get to /Applications/Cydia.app folder via Finder, but when I try to open Cydia.app; it appears like the program opens up and I'm not able to view its contents.

I am logged in as root, btw.

EDIT:

Figured it out. All I had to do was choose view package contents from the file menu.