Cydia, or Cydia Store, is a collection of downloadable applications for iOS. Cydia is made for Mac, iPod, iPad, and iPhone. It provides users with applications that are not available in the Apple iStore.

How to Install Cydia

In order to install Cydia, open a web browser on the iPhone, visit http://www.jailbreakme.com , and click the “Free” button. The program will then install itself and you will have instant access to Cydia’s extensive collection of both free and commercial applications.

Despite the ability to download the software,  the majority of Cydia’s applications require the user to jailbreak his/her iPhone. This can be done using any jailbreaking software such as Black Rain, Lime Rain, and Spirit.

How to Jailbreak

Jailbreaking is easy, but you should know that jailbreaking may void your warranty or even cause your Apple device to stop working properly.

If you want to jailbreak the Apple device, do the following:

1) Install Spirit or any of the programs mentioned above on either a Windows or Mac computer.

2) Connect the device to the computer.

3) Backup the Apple device within iTunes to ensure that all applications and photos are recoverable if anything goes wrong.

4) Spirit should automatically recognize the Apple device and display a button that says “Jailbreak.” Press this button to allow Spirit to restart the Apple device and install its own programs, which should take nearly 30 seconds.

Cydia products include a wide variety of tools you can get by either changing the root of the directory tree to “/” (without quotations) or by using the Apple Installer with http://apptapp.saurik.com/ as the Installer source.

IFile
iFile is a file manager and viewer for the iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad. IFile allows you to view and modify files instantly, bookmark webpages, files, and folders, and access various programs including PDF files, text files, HTML documents, compressed files, videos, music, and Microsoft formats. IFile also supports file compression and extraction, email, and allows users to upload and download files from its built-in web server. It is available in the Cydia Store for $4.00.

Ringtone Shuffler
Ringtone Shuffler is a program made for Blackberry, Windows Mobile Smartphones, Palm Treos, Centros, Android, T-Mobile G1, and iPhone. Ringtone Shuffler allows you to shuffle your ringtones so that a different one plays each time a call is received.You can shuffle the entire ringtone collection or select specific ringtones.

YourTube
YourTube is an open source J2ME program that allows you to search for YouTube videos and download them to iPods, iPhones, and other Apple products. YourTube supports multiple video formats including MP4, FLV, and 3GP.

gPSPhone
gPSPhone is a software emulator for Gameboy Advance that can play thousands of different GBA games on your iPod Touch or IPhone. However, it does not provide the actual games, so these must be found and loaded via an external source. GPSPhone was created by ExoPhase and is available in the Cydia Store for $4.99.

iWipe
iWipe is a simple program you can use to completely erase data from your iPhone. Calls can still be received and the phone can be locked while iWipe is in use. IWipe was created by Jonathan Zdziarski and can be bought for $2.99.