Bored With Those Wallpaper Images? It's Time to Try LivePapers

[Anthony Bouchard]

Animated wallpapers are fun. So why deal with those boring images anymore? LivePapers, by iOS developer Porkholt Labs, is a new jailbreak application that just became available in Cydia Saturday afternoon. The application allows you to apply animated wallpapers to your iOS device and it works on all jailbroken iOS devices from iOS 5.1.1 up to iOS 6.1.2.

LivePapers promises to be battery efficient and powerful. It uses OpenGL ES, which the developer says will provide smooth animations and increased performance on iOS devices. After 40 seconds of inactivity, the animations will freeze to even further save battery. You can resume the animation by simply swiping to a different page on your home screen. We can confirm that even on a sluggish iPhone 4, the animations via LivePapers are just as smooth as on our iPhone 5.

LivePapers will add an application to your home screen, which you can open to configure your LivePapers:



The application will offer a Cover Flow-like interface for all of your LivePapers. From the application, you can tap on an animation to see a preview of the animation, and then tap on the green status bar to exit the animation preview. You can enable the LivePapers for the Home and/or Lock screens by using the "Home" and "Lock" buttons at the top left of the application – a check mark indicates that the option is selected.

You can also tap on the "Configure" button at the top right of the application to configure the animation preferences for the animations individually. Each animation has its own preferences, which are separate from one another.

By default, the free LivePapers application only comes with one animation – the bubbles animation. It has no options to configure, but you can apply it or switch back to your boring image wallpaper. To get the options shown above, you can download add-ons for LivePapers, such as the Bubbles Pro LivePaper and Nexus LivePaper. These are 99¢ each in Cydia.

The Bubbles Pro LivePaper will let you configure the particle count, particle lifetime, particle size, particle opacity, velocity, minimum depth, maximum depth, background, colors, touch actions, and particle edges. The Nexus LivePaper will let you configure the wallpaper, strip width, strip length, velocity, depth tolerance, and strip count.

As you can see, the animations will occur on both the home screen and the lock screen:



When you are charging your iOS device, the animations will happen below the battery layer and your battery indicator will still function normally as expected:



If you’re using the Nexus LivePaper, you can choose to use the default wallpaper that it comes with, or you can use your normal home screen and lock screen wallpaper and have the animations play right above it:



Because LivePapers is an application that accepts LivePaper add-ons, third party developers can make more LivePapers that you can download in Cydia to use through LivePapers. While Bubbles Pro and Nexus are the only two options in Cydia at this point in time, the developer says that they are working on a live weather wallpaper. Other developers will also be able to make their own to be hosted in Cydia.

LivePapers is really awesome, especially for those of you that are into customization... and if you’ve heard of vWallpapers… well, it’s no comparison. LivePapers wins hands-down in terms of user interface, options, and performance. LivePapers also respond to touch on the lock screen!

LivePapers will work on any iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad running iOS 5.1.1 or later. Check it out!

Name: LivePapers
Price: FREE
Version: 1.0.0-5
Requirements: iOS 5.1.1+
Repo: BigBoss
Developer: Porkholt Labs
Editor's Rating:  6/5

Note: While LivePapers is free, the Bubbles Pro and Nexus LivePapers used in this piece as examples are 99¢ in the BigBoss repository of Cydia.

[sobeniceguy2]

It is pretty cool. I am enjoying it! .99 cents is worth it.

[Norb]

I'm bored with the black background when my phone is sleeping, can we enable like some 3D animated screen saver? I mean what could possibly go wrong?

[Simon]

Awesome, can't wait for some more to come out.

[Brivent]

Won't work on my iphone 5 home screen...anyone else having this issue? Works great on the lock screen though.

[Simon]

Won't work on my iphone 5 home screen...anyone else having this issue? Works great on the lock screen though.

Do you have a theme or something running on your home screen?

[Brivent]

Yes I was running rocketsauce HD, tried disabling it but didn't work...here's a list of other tweaks I'm using, I also tried disable most of them...this is a great live wallpaper tweak, any help getting it going would b great...also I've bought the nexus live wallpaper for this tweak but has same results.



Activator
Auxo
Barrel
Calendar widget pro
Cascade
Color KB
Folder enhancer
Infinidock
Lockinfo
Unfold
WeeSearchPro
Winterboard
Zephyr

Thanks again

[antado]

Do we know if it plays nice with other tweaks, like barrel?

[jps1012]

Very interesting. Wonder if it plays well with others?

[usamakhan]

What effect does it have on the battery life? Other then that, it's an amazing tweak! Thanks.

P.S. What do I need to create my own wallpaper?

[aorowe]

I just tried installing it, it will not let me boot out of safe mode.

I keep trying to exit safemode, but he keeps booting back into it.

Still running iOS 6.1

[Anthony Bouchard]

I just tried installing it, it will not let me boot out of safe mode.

I keep trying to exit safemode, but he keeps booting back into it.

Still running iOS 6.1

What other tweaks are you running?

Yes I was running rocketsauce HD, tried disabling it but didn't work...here's a list of other tweaks I'm using, I also tried disable most of them...this is a great live wallpaper tweak, any help getting it going would b great...also I've bought the nexus live wallpaper for this tweak but has same results.

Activator
Auxo
Barrel
Calendar widget pro
Cascade
Color KB
Folder enhancer
Infinidock
Lockinfo
Unfold
WeeSearchPro
Winterboard
Zephyr

Thanks again

I think WinterBoard, Infinidock, or Barrel are the most likely issues. Try uninstalling those temporarily and see if it fixes anything.

[bmwraw8482]

Very nice. Looking forward more backgrounds coming out, especially a weather background

[blkcadi]

Pretty cool concept. I'm diggin' it.

[bisayakid07]

What other tweaks are you running?



I think WinterBoard, Infinidock, or Barrel are the most likely issues. Try uninstalling those temporarily and see if it fixes anything.

I love these 3 tweaks. I would pass if these are the culprit.

[Anthony Bouchard]

I love these 3 tweaks. I would pass if these are the culprit.

No problem, but let us know please

[yearoftherat]

Pretty nice mod...just curious what the developer considers to be "battery efficient"?

[Brivent]

Uninstalled WB, infinidock and barrel along with several others and its still a no go on my home screen. Lockscreen works perfect

[blakroz]

does it also work in landscape? does it rotate?

[Anthony Bouchard]

does it also work in landscape? does it rotate?

Do your home screen and lock screen rotate?