iPhone 6s comes with a new feature called 3D Touch. Here’s how to get something similar on an older iPhone.
Apple announced and unveiled the iPhone 6s earlier this month, and the new device comes with a small handful of new features, including a better 12-megapixel camera capable of recording 4K video, a faster processor, a rose gold color option, and a new display. technology called 3D Touch.
3D Touch is essentially the same technology as Force Touch on the Apple Watch. It lets users select something by tapping it or open it as usual, but you can also hard press the screen to bring up alternative options, similar to how left click and right click work on a mouse.
While iOS apps must be updated to support 3D Touch, most of the popular apps have already been updated, allowing users to take advantage of 3D Touch right away when the iPhone 6s is officially released tomorrow.
However, if you’re not upgrading to the iPhone 6s and will instead stick with your old iPhone, you won’t be able to take advantage of 3D Touch unfortunately. However, here comes a jailbreak tweak that gives you similar functionality.
Here’s how to get 3D Touch-like features on an old iPhone.
3D Touch on Older iPhones
While you’ll never get real 3D Touch on an iPhone other than the iPhone 6s, you can at least have the ability to emulate some of the features of 3D Touch.
All you need is a jailbroken iPhone, which is easier said than done, but as long as your iPhone is running iOS 8.4.0 or earlier, you can jailbreak it. We have a comprehensive how-to guide on how to jailbreak your iPhone, and the process is actually pretty easy.
Shake a jailbroken iPhone and the battle is half done. All that’s left is Cydia. You can do this tweak by going into Cydia, pressing tab, searching for the tweak and then installing it. Her Available in BigBoss repositoryso there is no need to install a third party repository.
Brief description of what the tweak does, allowing you to initiate an Activator action by pressing and holding anywhere on the screen. That said, the tweak tracks changes in finger size and touch density to avoid accidentally launching those wiggly apps where you go to delete apps and games, so you kind of have to roll your finger while holding it on the screen. It may take some practice, but getting down is pretty easy.
Now, the obvious downside is that you cannot initiate certain actions depending on where you hold your finger. So if you hold your finger on a certain app, it won’t let you initiate a certain action. Instead, you can just set an Enabler action and activate it when you press anywhere on the screen.
Currently, this is the only jailbreak tweak that comes close to delivering a 3D Touch experience. However, a jailbreak tweak that hasn’t been released yet teased earlier this month Shortly after the iPhone 6s was announced. The tweak is still in development and there’s no timeline for its release, but it seems to offer an experience closer to a true 3D Touch interface.
A jailbreak tweak like this shouldn’t be too hard to find, so we’ll probably see a better 3D Touch based jailbreak tweak soon, giving users a chance to use the tech on older iPhones. For now, there is a capable jailbreak tweak that will be appetizing or appetizing, at least for now.