Hidden iPod touch Settings revealed (including Album Shuffle)

[BlackWolf]

hi there,
I played with the Preferences.app a couple of days ago and discovered that the iPod touch (as well as the iPhone) have some hidden settings. Some of them are really useful and I don't understand why apple hid them.
I know that some (or most) of the stuff I discovered has already been discovered long ago. But I found some stuff I didn't see anywhere else AND I couldn't find a topic about this in this board so here we go.

First let me say: This works for touches ONLY. Don't copy my Preferences.app if you use an iphone! You can ask me for single options and I can tell you how to add them to the iphone, but dont download the Preferences.app from below!
Also note that I'm not accountable for any damage this does to your iPod. I don't see how it could if you made a backup, but do this at your own risk!
Now lets get started ...

Install it
What you do is you SSH into your ipod and go to /Applications/. when you are there, make sure you make a COMPLETE BACKUP OF YOUR PREFERENCES.APP FOLDER.
If you did that download this file.
Unzip it into your /Applications/-Folder on your iPod so the Preferences.app-Folder that is in there gets overwritten. Don't delete your Preferences.app! My Folder only contains the files I actually changed, so it overwrites those. But you still need all the other files that are not included in my zip file!
Update: It seems some people were unable to access the new settings. I guess this is because of wrong file-rights. Make sure the Preferences.app as well as the files within it are chmodded to 755. It should work perfectly fine if they are. But again, this shows the importance of a backup(!)

After you did that you will have the new settings (you dont even have to restart/respring the ipod). Just go to your settings and you will notice that I not only added preferences, but I changed the menus a little. If you don't like that install your old Preferences (the backup you made) and ask me how to install the stuff you want. I will tell you how to do it then.

What are the new settings?
So now for the interesting part. Thew new stuff.

• Statistics: You can access the Statistics-Menu from the bottom of the main menu. This is a menu I found hidden on the ipod. I don't know if this is actually used on the iphone. Unfortunatly it doesnt work very well on the touch. The "Power-Logging"-Switch just determines whether or not the statistics should be activated. Below you see the time you used your ipod and had it in standby since your last full charge. Unfortunatly, these counters reset every time you restart or respring. Also, the standby-counter seems to be increased even when you use your ipod. So the actual standby time is "Standby minus Use". I still found it to be interesting so I added it
• General & Tweaks: This is where all the other changes are. I changed the structure of this heavily so it looks a lot different from the usual General menu. I think all the old settings shouldnt be hard to find so I won't mention them here. Below is a list of all the stuff that I added/changed
• General & Tweaks -> Display -> Brightness: You'll notive you can see your brightness as a numeric value now. Thought that to be useful.
• General & Tweaks -> Display -> Screen-Lock: Previously called Auto-Lock, this option determines after how many minutes of idling your ipod screen locks itself. This option was there before, but I added some times like 30 Seconds or 10 Minutes.
• General & Tweaks -> Display -> Screen-Dim: This is a new thing. This determines after how many minutes your ipod dims the screen to save battery. Please note here that, when you set Screen-Lock, the iPod automatically sets this to "Screen-Lock minus 15 seconds". So after you have set Screen-Lock you have to set this option since it gets overwritten. Also note that every value equal to or bigger than the Screen-Lock is useless.
• General & Tweaks -> Sound Effects: This is a complete new menu I found hidden on the iPod. No idea why apple hid this, its actually very helpful. You can enable or disable some of the system sounds like the clicking when you type something with the virtual keyboard or the clicking when you unlock your ipod or when you get/sent mail.
• General & Tweaks -> Keyboard -> Autocorrection: I added the possibility to enable or disable the ipod autocorrection while typing. I hate the autocorrection so I really love this option.
• General & Tweaks -> Shuffle: Now one of the most surprising and interesting things I found. The iPod touch, as well as the iPhone, actually has an "shuffle album" option, it just cannot be accessed. What you set here will be the new "shuffle" when you play music. So if you set this to album and turn on shuffle when you play music, it will be album shuffle. You can turn it back to songs anytime you like.
• General & Tweaks -> Display -> Sleep Controls: Found that and think its useless but still added it so the "Shuffle"-Option doesnt feel alone. With this you can deactivate the music playback controls when the ipod screen is locked (if the ipod is locked you can double-tap your home-button to bring up the music controls. This gets disabled. Note that you still HAVE music controls as long as the ipod screen is not locked)
• General & Tweaks -> Carrier Text: Fun option. You can change the "iPod"-Text in the statusbar to anything you like. If you want to add own options see the how-to below this list.
• General & Tweaks -> Numeric Wi-Fi: Shows your Wi-Fi Signal Strength as a numeric value. Don't know the exact range, but I believe it to be 1-100. You have to respring or reboot your ipod for this to take effect.
• General & Tweaks -> Faked Time: A switch to turn off and on the faked time. See the option below for further information.
• General & Tweaks -> Faked Time Text: You can set a text that is displayed instead of the time in your statusbar. Again, to see how to make your own textes see the how-to below this list. Note that you also have to set the switch above this to "on" to make it work.
• General & Tweaks -> Numeric Battery: Shows your battery status as a numeric value (1-100). Found it to be better than the symbol. You have to respring or reboot your ipod for this to take effect.

So I hope you lik these things. If you don't want to use my Preferences.app (for example because you don't need some of the new stuff or you dont like the new structure) you can ask here how to add some of these options by yourself. I don't explain it here because it would take a little

HOW-TO: Own Carrier-Text and Faked Time
In the new "General & Tweaks" menu you got a "Carrier Text" and a "Faked Time Text" that you can set. Now, the options you have there are very little and very unimaginative. So you probably want to add your own. Very simple.
SSH into your iPod, go to /Applications/Preferences.app/ and open up the "General.plist" file that you'll find there.
If you want to set your own Carrier-Text search for "SBFakeCarrier", if you want to set a fake time search for "SBFakeTimeString" (without the quotation marks).
Whatever of those two you search you will find these lines two lines below your first search result:
<key>validTitles</key>
<array>
after these two lines is where you put in your new options. So let's say you want to add the Carrier-Text "1337". You search for "SBFakeCarrier", two lines below that you see the "<key>validTitles</key><array>"-stuff and you create a new line below that and enter:
<string>1337</string>
if you want to add another option then create a new line below your first new option and do the same. Always make sure its <string>Your Text</string>
Unfortunatly we are not done yet. What you do now is you look a few lines below the lines you just created. You'll see
<key>validValues</key>
<array>
Its just 3 or 4 lines below your lines. You do the exact same thing below those two lines either. So if you enter <string>1337</string> before you enter the exact same thing again below the "<key>validValues</key><array>"-part. what's really important here is that its the SAME ORDER as above. when youre done save the file to the ipod, restart your settings and you should see your new options.
just so you understand what you did: what you first entered is what the ipod displays in the option screen. the second thing you entered is what it actually writes in the preference file.
so you dont get confused here is an example how it could look after you changed it:


HOW-TO: Localize the new settings
Maybe some of you like my settings and want to use them, but have not set their ipod to english. Since I didn't localize my new settings you will get some ugly texts. Loalizing the settings is pretty easy and takes about half an hour. First you SSH into your ipod and go to /Applications/Preferences.app
From there you download the folder that is named like your language. So if you have your iPod set to french you download the folder "French.lproj".
After you did that you can start localizing. Just use this page to convert every file you want to edit (otherwise you will see only gibberish):
http://140.124.181.188/~khchung/cgi-bin/plutil.cgi
I will now give you a list of what you have to edit to make it work. Below the list is a very well explained example, so no fear:

• Settings.strings
  • [General] - "General & Tweaks"
  • Media - "Media"
  • Applications - "Applications"
  • [USAGE] - "Statistics"
• General.strings
  • [General] - "General & Tweaks"
  • Preferences - "Preferences"
  • Brightness - "Display"
  • [INTERNATIONAL] - "Regional"
  • Tweaks - "Tweaks"
  • Shuffle - "Shuffle"
  • Songs - "Songs"
  • Albums - "Albums"
  • Sleep Controls - "Sleep Controls"
  • Statusbar Tweaks - "Statusbar Tweaks"
  • Carrier Text - "Carrier Text"
  • Numeric Wi-Fi - "Numeric Wi-Fi"
  • Faked Time - "Faked Time"
  • Faked Time Text - "Faked Time Text"
  • Numeric Battery - "Numeric Battery"
• Brightness.strings
  • Display - "Display"
  • Sleep and Lock - "Sleep & Lock"
  • Screen locks after - "Screen locks after"
  • Screen dims after - "Screen dims after"
  • [Screen Lock] - "Screen Passcode"
  • 4_MIN - "4 Minutes"
  • 7_MIN - "7 Minutes"
  • 10_MIN - "10 Minutes"
  • Wallpaper - "Wallpaper"
• International.strings
  • DATE_AND_TIME - "Date & Time"
• Date & Time.strings
  • [CALENDAR_TEXT_1] - "Time Zone Support always shows dates and times in the calendars time zone."
  • [CALENDAR_TEXT_2] - "
    When off, everything will be shown in the local time zone." (This has a newline at the beginning. Just press "enter" then type your translation)
• Keyboard.strings
  • Enable Autocorrection - "Enable Autocorrection"
• Usage Statistics.strings
  • Power-Logging - "Power-Logging"
  • [USAGE_HEADER] - "Time since last full charge ...";
  • [USAGE_ELAPSED] - "... in use"
  • [STANDBY_ELAPSED] - "... in standby"
  • [USAGE] - "Statistics"
  • About - "About"

Alright, example. We take
Settings.strings -> [General] - "General & Tweaks"
So what you do now is you open the Settings.strings. The square brackets around "General" mean that this is nothing you have to add, but something that is already in that file and has to be altered by you. So you search the file for "General" (without the quotation marks) until you find this line:
<key>General</key>
leave that line unaltered! never change an already existing <key>-line! below this line you see a line that says
<string>something</string>
Between <string> and </string> is where you place your translation. To make it easier for you my list also tells you what you have to translate. So now you have to find a good translation for "General & Tweaks" in your language, type it in beween <string> and </string> and you're done.
Another example: My list also says
Settings.strings -> Media - "Media"
No square brackets around the first Media means that this is not in the file yet and you have to create it yourself. To do this open Settings.strings, scroll to the end of the file where you'll see
</dict>
</plist>
ABOVE that lines you type in
<key>Media</key>
(Media is the first media here. If the line was Media - "Settings" you would still type in <key>Media</key>).
BELOW the newly created line your type ing
<string>Your translation for Media</string>
(this is the second Media. If the line was Media - "Settings" you would type in <string>Translation for Settings</string>)

Do that for every item of my list and you will have a complete localization. Doesn't take as long as you might think at first.
Note: The iPod does not take some special characters like & If you have a special character look it up in this list, take the "Decimal Code"-number of that character and in your .strings-file, instead of your special character, you write
&#decimalcode;
So for example © is replaced by © or & would be replaced by &
This does NOT mean that every character that is in that table does not work on the ipod. if for some reason one of your settings-menus is empty on the iPod its most likely due to a faulty special character, so check for them in your .strings-file.

List of localisations
I totally forgot I already did the german translation (since I'm from germany ;-))
German localisation by me
just overwrite the already existing German.lproj in /Applications/Preferences.app/

And now have fun with this!
Regards

PS: Some screenshots for you:

[DerekVOF]

Wow - you're really going low-level here. I'll have to give this a try later :-)

[BlackWolf]

Originally Posted by DerekVOF

Wow - you're really going low-level here. I'll have to give this a try later :-)

unfortunatly not as low-level as I'd like to get. except for the general, brightness and statistics menu all menus are "bundles", so they are real excecutables and therefore unchangeable. and even the three accessable menus are bound to very strict rules. for example I was unable to put the "Sound Effects" menu where you can determine where the system sounds (like clicks) are outputted into the new sound menu I found. seems like the ipod has not all variables avaiable in every menu.
But there is actually some more stuff. I found a "Touch"-Menu which is clearly from the developers (you can set a value there that determines how far away from your finger the ipod detects the tap. so if you set this really high you tap the screen at the top and the ipod thinks you tapped it in the middle or something. I left that out for security reasons). also there were some strange options like "HideYouTube" (which, apparently, hides youtube). wondered why apple hates youtube
just left this stuff out since its kind of useless.

well, hope you and some others enjoy the hidden settings.

[Zach23]

Hey,

I used this on my iPhone... I know about the warning, but I just wanted to change some things than put the normal preferences app. I changed battery number and wifi number on, and then changed it back and everything works fine. So anybody that has an iphone and wants to do that I tried it and nothing bad happens. Make sure you have a back up of your preferences app.

Thanks,
Zach

[BlackWolf]

Originally Posted by Zach23

Hey,

I used this on my iPhone... I know about the warning, but I just wanted to change some things than put the normal preferences app. I changed battery number and wifi number on, and then changed it back and everything works fine. So anybody that has an iphone and wants to do that I tried it and nothing bad happens. Make sure you have a back up of your preferences app.

Thanks,
Zach

well, the settings themself wont do any harm yon your iphone. It justs that if you copy everything its possible settings you had on your ipod before are disappearing, since I wasnt sure if I took out any of them.
also, you wont get the the changed main menu on the iphone. but if it works I'm glad, but still, I don't guarantee iphone support.
If you upload your backup of the Preferences.app maybe I can do an iphone version that works for sure if I have time. No guarantees I'll do it.

regards

[csdonz]

nice find, may try later. I'd like to disable autocorrection too

[Chunk]

Tremendous find! I can't wait to get the numeric battery and wi-fi strength.

Only thing missing now is numeric volume (or have I missed a setting somewhere?).

[Chunk]

Originally Posted by csdonz

nice find, may try later. I'd like to disable autocorrection too

If you *only* want to be able to toggle autocorrection, you can install Kb2.

[poopymath]

Nice find, downloaded and put onto my iPod.

[BlackWolf]

Originally Posted by Chunk

Tremendous find! I can't wait to get the numeric battery and wi-fi strength.

Only thing missing now is numeric volume (or have I missed a setting somewhere?).

no, I'm actually missing that too
unfortunatly, you would to rewrite and recompile the music player application to get numeric volume. it's not controlled by a setting (or at least not that I know of) so I can't add that, sorry. I still hope apple does that in their next firmware, since I'm really missing numeric volume.

btw: installer repository is almost ready to go :-)

[kinex]

I have SSH on my touch but how do I "SSH into it?"

[Chunk]

Not sure if you mentioned this but you can change back and forth from the numeric battery and wifi strength to the old graphics by touching the numbers (or graphics). Very cool.

Also, I think the RSSI (wi-fi) max value is 60.

[BlackWolf]

Installer Repository ready

Unfortunatly, the forum software doesn't let me edit the first post here, so I can't add it there. But here is the instructions to install the preferences via Installer:

1. If you installed my Preferences before and want to do it with the Installer now, make sure you uninstalled them first. The Installer-Script will make a backup of your preferences.app. If you have mine already installed it will backup them which would be completly useless.

2. Add http://m8an.de/installer.xml to your sources list (Installer->Sources->Edit->Add). Let the sources list refresh

3. Go to "Install" and then go to "Tweaks".

4. Tap "Advanced Preferences" and then "Install"

5. That's it. Enjoy your new Preferences. Updates will be provided through the installer (if there are any) and you can uninstall them quickly and easily via installer which should give you your old preferences back.

PS: Note that this is my first installer repository/package. I tested it intensly and think it should work fine. If any problems occur and you are not able to get your Preferences back, download the original Prefs here and copy them to /Applications/ on your iPod.

[darkchicken50]

I REALLY love what you have done here, but is it at all possible to use it with FW 1.1.1 as i really cant be arsed upgrading to 1.1.2 and doing all that jazz, not going to bother until 1.1.3 has been fully haxed nice and good.

Thanks 4 all replies!

edit: (just a heads up, i'm not some huge noob, just a small answer will be fine. btw lol at "how do i ssh INTO it?".... reminds me of zoolander... the files are INSIDE THE COMPUTER!!!!!!!!!)

[BlackWolf]

Originally Posted by darkchicken50

I REALLY love what you have done here, but is it at all possible to use it with FW 1.1.1 as i really cant be arsed upgrading to 1.1.2 and doing all that jazz, not going to bother until 1.1.3 has been fully haxed nice and good.

Thanks 4 all replies!

edit: (just a heads up, i'm not some huge noob, just a small answer will be fine. btw lol at "how do i ssh INTO it?".... reminds me of zoolander... the files are INSIDE THE COMPUTER!!!!!!!!!)

well, some people are just not into all that computer stuff, so you can't really blame them for being nubish. everyone is somewhen.

to answer your question: I can't tell you. I never had 1.1.1 running except for when I jailbroke and I don't know the files 1.1.1 uses. but you can try. When you install via apptap installer, it should back up your Preferences.app folder. If your settings don't work you should be able to simply uninstall it and it will use the backup to bring back your old Preferences.app, so it shouldn't do any harm if it doesn't work. I just wrote FW 1.1.2 only because I'm not sure if it works with 1.1.1 and didn't want anyone to get the settings screwed. but try it, I think it should work fine.

oh, btw, i totally oversaw the "how do I SSH into the iPod"-question: there are numerous threads how to do it. you have to download WinSCP for windows or cyberduck for mac, enter the IP of your ipod (Settings->Wi-Fi->Blue arrow next to your network->IP-Adress) as the server-ip, root as username and the password you set when you jailbroke as your password. after that you can browse your ipods hard drive and upload files to it. But since I did the installer repository you should be able to avoid SSHing.