Indeed, Stratos takes many cues from Auxo of old, but that’s one of the tweak’s most appealing assets. There are some, even after two successful iterations, who never quite came around to Auxo 2 and its sequel. For those people, Stratos is a jailbreak tweak that’s been highly anticipated for quite some time.
When you swipe up from the bottom of the screen, Stratos will be launched displaying all the open apps on your iPhone. The App Switcher occupies only one third of your screen featuring a blurred background with app cards. You can scroll through the list just like the original App Switcher as well as launch any of them.
If you’re thinking what happens to Control Center, you can still access it by swiping the App Switcher from left to right when you’re on the first page. Doing so displays the music control buttons along with a volume slider and if you swipe to to the right again, you’ll view the remaining parts of Control Center such as the toggles.
Apps can be dismissed from the Stratos interface by performing a swipe-up gesture on the card previews. A tap and hold on any of the cards closes all applications. One thing that stood out to me was the animation that occurs when closing all apps. The animation is clunky, abrupt, and lacks the polish of something that a3tweaks would have worked on. I caught myself whispering out loud that “there is no way that a3tweaks would have shipped something like that.†And while that’s true, it’s not a total knock against the CortexDevTeam or its designers. It just accentuates the insane amount of polish heaped on tweaks by the former group, who, in the minds of some, let that quality obsession turn into a hinderance instead of a help.
As previously stated, Stratos does have its own characteristic and innovations, which are all configurable by means of the tweak’s preferences. Beneath the kill-switch, you’ll find settings for Background Style—a way to change the background color of the App Switcher—background height, parallax mode, and more.
Users also have the option of showing the currently opened app in the switcher, and can toggle on Home button activation—a switch that allows users to make the double press of the Home button invoke Stratos instead of the stock App Switcher.
One of the primary innovations of Stratos that I enjoy is the QuickLaunch feature. Enabled via a switch in the preferences, QuickLaunch lets you launch apps from Stratos’ interface by simply swiping up on the app after invoking the App Switcher in one fluid motion. It’s not something that’s easily describable, so I recommend that you watch my video above for a demonstration of QuickLaunch in action.
The developers have submitted it, and should be hitting Cydia soon. It will be available for $1.99.
