[Review] WebSpot - View A Web Site In Place of SpotLight

[Anthony Bouchard]

Do you find SpotLight useless? Many people do – with the addition of Siri and with jailbreak tweaks making accessing iOS easier than ever, SpotLight has lost most of its luster. If you want to replace SpotLight with something else, then a new jailbreak tweak dubbed WebSpot by iOS developer Vladislav Korotnev might fit your tastes better. It puts a Web site of your choice where SpotLight would normally load up.

WebSpot, once installed, adds a preferences pane to your Settings application where you can configure your Web site. If you don’t configure a Web site, scrolling over to where SpotLight used to be will yield a big, white box. After you add a Web site through the preferences for WebSpot, the Web site you chose will load up automatically for you whenever you scroll over to where SpotLight used to be. The preferences are shown below:



WebSpot isn’t perfect. As you can see from the first screenshot, after attempting to load up the ModMyi news site, WebSpot tries to load the full desktop version instead of mobile version and it doesn’t even scale it down. Some Web sites will fit, like Google, however even Apple's Web site loads too large for the small screen. That being said, it makes you scroll not only up and down, but also side to side to read text – a major downside. Depending on your Internet speeds, loading the Web site of your choice will vary. Loading ModMyi took around three seconds after scrolling over to WebSpot.

WebSpot makes a nice addition to the home screen if you want to add quick access to something like Facebook or Twitter. As soon as you scroll over to WebSpot, your timeline will be loaded and you can catch up with friends and their statuses or Tweets.

Whether you like the appearance of WebSpot or not will be hit or miss. It isn’t really something you would expect Apple to have made. What's more is you can only set one Web site at a time with WebSpot, so you might even consider SpotLight to be more useful since you can search the Web right from the search bar. Getting back to your home screen can be done one of two ways, scrolling back over or pressing the home button. This tweak is free, so give it a try.

Name: WebSpot
Price: FREE
Version: 1.0.22
Repo: BigBoss
Developer: Vladislav Korotnev
Editor's Rating:  3/5

Sources: Vladislav Korotnev

[Johnathan Daly]

Can't there by a review section on this site? It's infuriating to come here to get some Apple news, only to be confronted with tons of these worthless reviews.

[Liveitlive]

Can't there by a review section on this site? It's infuriating to come here to get some Apple news, only to be confronted with tons of these worthless reviews.

Infuriating? Words have lost all meaning. I Doubt u r hulking out on ur keyboard after seeing these "worthless reviews". Scroll by.


There's always a critic.

[TheDirtyDiddler]

can't there by a review section on this site? It's infuriating to come here to get some apple news, only to be confronted with tons of these worthless reviews.

words hurt brain!!!!

[RRoD420]

Any way to contact the developer?? It's awesome I really like it. But I can't use it because there's no way to go back or reset to the homepage so you put google make a search choose a result, you're stuck at that page. Can't go back to google, please fix this!

[Liveitlive]

Any way to contact the developer?? It's awesome I really like it. But I can't use it because there's no way to go back or reset to the homepage so you put google make a search choose a result, you're stuck at that page. Can't go back to google, please fix this!

I thought this at first as well... But just pull down and it has the top bar where u can tap on the google icon or w.e.

Actually I guess not... Only when still on google, not once u click the link. I too loved it till u told me this lol

[RRoD420]

Haha yeah, i don't understand did nobody else noticei guess nobody uses it. But i really like it if only it had a reset button. Wheres the dev??

[Liveitlive]

Haha yeah, i don't understand did nobody else noticei guess nobody uses it. But i really like it if only it had a reset button. Wheres the dev??

I contacted them thru the cydia app where it says contact, then select author. Hope they gets some sorta fix. Guess it would work select sites without navigating from the first page. Lol. Sounds far more limited now.

[Ryaninfg]

All issues have been attended too. Keyboard pops up when needed, refresh, back, home button options. The developer added an actual address bar option. And the page will go back every time you leave spotlight. If you want.

[epignosis567]

Can't there by a review section on this site? It's infuriating to come here to get some Apple news, only to be confronted with tons of these worthless reviews.

actually, these reviews are the main reason i come here. who wants another fanboi site just to report on apple news. there's a million of those. try cnn...

[Liveitlive]

All issues have been attended too. Keyboard pops up when needed, refresh, back, home button options. The developer added an actual address bar option. And the page will go back every time you leave spotlight. If you want.

How about being able to use/see the home buttons and such while in landscape mode on iPad... That is my only problem after the update today.

[RRoD420]

Thanks for updating the tweak!!!! Works great

[Liveitlive]

I'm actually still having issues with the keyboard not showing upon my iPhone 4. Works on the iPad n did work on the iPhone but has now stopped.

[hadzo]

I feel this is a useless and redundant tweak, but thumbs up for effort and keeping it free.