An iPod touch 4th generation showing the iOS 6 home screen with its glossy icons. Photo: Gameplay010unused, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
In June 2013, right after Apple unveiled the flat, colourful iOS 7 at WWDC, a designer published a concept showing how Cydia might look if it followed the new style. We wrote about it at the time. Looking back, the concept is a small window into a big change.
From leather and glass to flat colour
iOS 6 was the high point of skeuomorphism: linen backgrounds, glossy icons, a leather-bound calendar and a felt-green Game Center that looked like a casino table. iOS 7, led on the design side by Jony Ive, replaced all of that with thin type, translucent layers and bright gradients. Every app suddenly looked old, and Cydia, with its pinstriped iOS 3-era look, looked older than most.
The concept
The 2013 mock-up kept Cydia's structure (sources, sections, changes, installed packages, search) but redrew it with white space, thin icons and the new tab bar. It was not an official design, and the result was mixed. Some readers loved it. Others argued that Cydia should never try to look like Apple, because its whole identity was being the alternative.
What actually happened
- Cydia received modest visual updates over the years, but it never got a full iOS 7-style redesign.
- Newer package managers such as Sileo, released in 2019, were designed from the start to look like modern iOS apps.
- In 2018 Cydia's creator closed the paid Cydia Store, a turning point we cover in why jailbreaking faded.
Why design mattered to jailbreakers
Theming was always one of the main reasons people jailbroke their phones. WinterBoard and later SnowBoard themes let users repaint every icon. When iOS 14 in 2020 allowed custom icons through Shortcuts and home screen widgets, and iOS 18 added free icon placement and tinted icons, a lot of that demand was met without any hacking.
Skeuomorphism still has fans. Some of the most loved touches of the old style lived in game apps: green felt, wooden card tables and slot reels with chrome edges. Many social casino games on the App Store still use that look, which we explore in our history of slots apps on the iPhone.