'ayra' Re-invents the iOS Lock Screen and Makes Notifications Much More Interactive

The iOS lock screen has been nearly the same for years, until iOS 7 that is. But since iOS 7 isn’t out yet, you can still enjoy a different kind of lock screen experience on your iOS 6 device compliments of your jailbreak.

With a new jailbreak tweak called ayra by iOS developer Bensge and graphic designer Surenix, shown above, your entire iOS lock screen experience will feel different, as will the experience of handling notifications.

With ayra, you’ll notice the aesthetic changes right off the bat. The lock screen looks much more transparent overall, which compliments your wallpaper. The slider looks different, the clock looks different, and you’ll even notice that iOS 7-like lock screen grabber at the top of the lock screen that you pull down to reveal several toggles and shortcuts as well as your notifications.

By tapping on notifications, you will be able to remove them from the notification interface, or launch the application to respond to the notification. This works for all applications that offer notifications. In the event that a notification is long and can't usually be fully shown, you can tap on the notification to expand it and you'll be able to see more content of the notification: 

The toggles and shortcuts that you have access to in ayra are found right above the notifications, and you can page through the toggles by swiping left or right. Tapping on a toggle or shortcut will toggle the corresponding feature on or off. The toggles and shortcuts ayra gives you include:

• Settings
• Respring
• Auto-lock
• Bluetooth
• Rotation
• Cellular data
• Do not disturb
• Location services
• VPN
• Vibration
• Personal hotspot
• Wi-Fi
• Flashlight
• Airplane mode
• 3G
• Ringer

From ayra's preferences pane in the Settings application, you will be able to change the order of the toggles and shortcuts by dragging them up or down via the grabbers at the right of the labels. You'll also find a way to enable or disable ayra on demand. Notably you will need to respring to enable or disable ayra, but you won't need to respring for your toggle and shortcut changes to take effect:

In our option, ayra really is a re-thought lock screen with re-thought notifications; it's very polished too! Overall it's fun to use and feels much different than Apple's basic lock screen. If you would like to give ayra a shot, you will find it in Cydia's BigBoss repository today for just $1.99. The tweak is only compatible with the iPhone and iPod touch at this point in time and can be installed on devices running iOS 6.0 and later.

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