Long ago I posted about how to get mobile stacks working on your iPhone. At the time I was using it as a speed dialer, and I was also pretty new to blogging and putting together tutorials, looking back at the article I wonder how the hell I expected anyone to understand what I was talking about. So I’ll try to do a bit better. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to post them and I’ll do my best to answer or find an answer.
For those of you who don’t know what a MobileStack is, have a look at the video below of it working on my iPhone when it was 1.1.1, basically its an app launher, and is styled after Stacks for Leopard on OS X.
OK here we go about the fun part of getting this to work on your 1.1.4 iPhone.
DON’T INSTALL THIS IF YOU ARE RUNNING CATTERPILAR/CATEGORIES
Setting Up & Applications Needed to Install
- First thing you need to do is back up/sync your iPhone (I would suggest doing this before you try anything for the first time).
Next download Stacks.zip - Extract it to your desktop
(it will contain all the files we need to put on your iPhone, you will need to locate/install the other apps needed)
- Obviously your iPhone will need to be jailbroken and activated, you will need Installer on your iPhone, BSDSubsystem Installed as well as OpenSSH, having TermVT-100 is also useful if you prefer to assign permissions via terminal on the iPhone. Obviously you will need Wifi access as well.
- Connect to your iPhone over Wifi
- Make sure auto lock on your iPhone is set to never. On your Mac or PC you will need either Fugu for Mac and WinSCP for PC (or some other FTP app), open up one of those on your computer and login using your iPhones IP address found under wifi settings (if any of this is not making sense maybe now is a good time to read the instructions a few times and do some research on things you don’t understand).
- Once you have logged into your iPhone, you should see the the System Files of the iPhone. (remember you will need OpenSSH installed)
- Installing Stack.app, StackController.app and needed Support files
- In your FTP app, navigate/open the Applications Folder, open the extracted/unzipped Stacks folder on your Desktop. Copy the Two .app files (Stack.app and StackController.app) into Applications, make sure they have 0755 permissions, reboot your iPhone
- Move your 4th icon from the Dock and replace it with the Stack Icon (if there is no icon but just the label Stack, thats ok, move it to the Dock) - Reboot the iPhone
- Once your iPhone is rebooted, relaunch/reconnect to your iPhone via OpenSSH and WinSCP/FUGU so you have FTP access again. From the root (/) directory, copy the file “com.steventroughtonsmith.stack” from the Stack folder on your Desktop, navigate to var/root/library/preferences and paste it there.
- Copy the file “com.steventroughtonsmith.stack.entries” from the Stack folder on your desktop. Navigate to root again (/) and then navigate to System/Library/launchDaemons and paste the file there.
- Reboot your iPhone again.
Testing
From here you should see the mobile stack in your dock, and when you tapp on it, it should show the apps in the Stack. Taping any app int eh Stack should launch the app. By default the Stack will have maps Notes and Mail in there, but the .entries file I gave you in the .zip is customized with some common apps. (I’m going to show you how to customize this below)
Customizing your Stack
- This is where it gets tricky and you will need to do a little research to make the apps you want to be used in the stack work. The list of apps handled by the stack are found in the file called “com.steventroughtonsmith.stack.entries” in var/root/Library/Prefernces, once you save that file to your computer and open it up you should see code like this:
<dict>
<key>ID</key>
<string>com.apptapp.SummerBoard</string>
<key>IconPath</key>
<string>/Applications/SMBPrefs.app/icon.png</string>
</dict>
- The Code above adds SummerBoard to the Stack. The ID string com.apptapp.SummerBoard launches SummerBoard, and the IconPath String calls the icon to be displayed, to change or add an app that is displaying you need to have matching ID Strings and Icon Paths.
- A quick tip is that each application has its ID listed in the Info.plist of the application’s .app folder as the CFBundleIdentifier key.
- So for example, if you wanted to add Installer you would add the following code to the “com.steventroughtonsmith.stack.entries” file
<dict>
<key>ID</key>
<string>com.apptapp.Installer</string>
<key>IconPath</key>
<string>/Applications/Installer.app/icon.png</string>
</dict>
The third app listed will be the app that shows up on top of the Stack.
Hiding you Apps that you have in the Stack
- To hide the icons you have in the stack you will need to use Poof, maybe even Customize to hide them. I am going to play around with my long lost friend and add all my speed dial contacts created by Spring Dial. Do not use this app with Caterpillar
Go Show Off!
Pat yourself on the back. You worked hard to get it working, go show someone!
MobileStacks is a really great little app for those adventurous enough to go fiddling around with it enough to make it work properly. It’s a bit tricky to get working right and has no official support for 1.1.4. If you play around with the StackController.app you can change between fan and grid style stacks, you can also relaunch or dissbale the stack.
There are numerous upgrades and tweaks for this great app, and I’ll post more on them once I get them working properly and they are stable enough for everyday use. Good luck and if you want post links to your mobile stack set up. For more information please check out the developers website wiki: http://code.google.com/p/mobilestack/wiki/Feedback
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2 Responses to “MobileStacks works on 1.1.4 iPhone - Tutorial”
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June 6th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Hi I could not get it to work after following your instructions. I noticed that I should copy the file “com.steventroughtonsmith.stack” to var/mobile/library/preferences rather than var/root/library/preferences. I did that but it still doesn’t work. any advice?