The iPhone and iPad Blog by Simon

So iOS 7 brings in a new gesture of accessing the Spotlight Search interface by holding and pulling down the homesceeen page which is quite cool rather than swiping to the leftmost. But if you are like me that don’t ever use this functionality, you will find it quite annoying and useless with Spotlight Search popping up when you scroll through springboard pages.

The jailbreak community has been aware of this and recently we have NoSpot updated for iOS 7. But it does not mean they dismissed opportunity to leverage on this special gesture. It can be useful.



Recently a jailbreak tweak from Joshua Lee Tucker (@DarkMalloc) called QuickContacts put up something very useful for SpotLight Search. What it does is very straightforward that you can tell from the name of the tweak. You can add 4 of your favorite contacts to the top bar. You just need to tap and hold on the slots to invoke the Contact window and select the person you want to add to the favorite panel. Do the same if you want to change.

Upon tapping on the little avatar icon of favorite contact, there will be a window pop up showing the avatar of the contact, and three options to select, Messages, Phone call or Email. The good thing is, it will pull up the stock messages and mail interface without any delay.

Ao far the drawbacks for me are, first, it only limits up to 4 contacts which only takes up a page and nothing else if swiping left. I hope it can be 2 to 3 pages, because when it comes to too many, it is simply the same as the Contacts App. The second thing is, the tweak automatically loads up the first number of the contact that you add. Say for example, I have a friends’s home, mobile and work numbers, it can only load up home because alphabetically it is arranged as the first number of this contact. I do not think it is convenient to remove or recategorize home number just to get mobile number for this particular tweak. The last thing is, you can still get into Spotlight Search if you swipe to the right. I wish there is a toggle that can complete disable it but keeping the QuickContacts functionality.

Edit: in latest version 1.1 updated with support for multiple numbers in a contact. You can now pick the number that you want to call or message when you tab on the icons on the pop up window. It’s cool.

So here we see potential of this tweak. It is comprehensive and functions as advertised. If you are looking for an all-in-one quick messaging tweak then here it is for you. It is now available on Cydia for $1.99.

This article, QuickContacts: Access your Favorite Contacts at Spotlight, was originally published at simonblog.com.