[APPS] Add hidden settings to your Preferences page! (album shuffle, ect.)

One of the guys over at iLounge (BlackWolf) put together a tutorial on how to add new settings to your iPod Touches/iPhones preferences page. Here is what he had to say in the thread he created at iLounge.

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.

…

Here are a couple screen captures of the new settings:

…

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.

… For more, check out the source link to his thread below.

Source to his thread: http://forums.ilounge.com/showthread.php?t=216688

- Jody Mitoma