Apple gave us a great feature when they allowed us to control the iPod app from the lockscreen. Wouldn’t it be great if we could do that with any music app we have installed on our devices? Accidental screen touches can reek havoc on your mobile groove! Don’t even mention that when you have to unlock the device to thumbs up a song, or go back cause you just love that song that much! Perhaps it’s a song you can’t stand
the app open to maintain controls over it. Well you can always just lock the device, but with Pandora, Simplify, LastFM you have to unlock your device if the song sucks. So man wouldn’t it be great if we could use all our other music apps from the Lockscreen, Homescreen, or with in apps? Well we dreamed it and phoenix3200 made it a reality. The name of his app is Music Controls and it can be found in the Cydia store.
That’s right this app cost $4.99. Is it worth it? Lets find out.
FSM EXCLUSIVE DEAL
After you’ve installed Music Controls from within Cydia it will ask you to restart your springboard. When the device boots back up you will notice there is no new icon on your home screen. Well how do I use this? You will need to go into the Apple Settings app. There will be a new tab just like the new tabs that some App Store apps create.
This will take you to the Music Controls activation page
Where you will then use the Purchase options to buy a license. After you have made your payment you will need to activate. I’m assuming that the Cydia store option uses your devices unique id. The PayPal option requires you to input your PayPal email. Once you’ve taken care of that tap the activate button. I had to enter the PayPal address twice, because the first attempt gave me a
“No record of this device” error. I closed the settings app went back in and tried again, and success.
The first thing we should do is turn Music Controls on. This will respring your device.
So now that we have activated and turned Music Controls on we still need to set it up to function how we want it to. The first tab is Music Players.
All the music apps you have installed will show up and you can set Music Controls to work with or not as you please. Next we have the Application overrides tab. This page lists every app installed on your device, and you can set Music Controls to Function normally with the default setting, which gives you player controls in the status bar and lists the song information. I like this function as it will scroll long song titles. The no StatusBar setting disables this function, and Music Controls Blacklisted will shut down your music player if you enter into a Blacklisted app. It would be extremely awesome if the music player app would start right back up when you exited the Blacklisted app, but we might just have to keep wishing for that feature. Next you will want to settup how Music Controls functions on the Status Bar.
You have the option to not allow Music Controls to show over the Status Bar, or to not show the Play/Pause indicator. You can also dissable the title scrolling or the speed of the scrolling. Next we have the Popup Controls.
I turned the in Music Player popup off.
I really didn’t see the need for a redundant set of controls, but the popup controls rock in all other apps! In the Lockscreen settings tab you can set Music Controls to Continually show the song title, and to show or not show the album art.
Last settings tab is Other Settings. This tab lets you control when the Popups close and if the Remote app uses the popup buttons.
Ok so we have Music Controls set up as we want it to function. Let’s see how well it works. In my first testing session I was sending the music to my car stereo over the stereo bluetooth connection, the headphone jack, and internal speaker Music Controls works flawlessly! I tested it with Music 2 (formerly Simplify Media, the connection of this app can be fickle, and the song title can stick for some odd reason while using
Music Controls) Pandora, and the iPod app. Music Controls in conjunction with the Remote App (Which I think is the most Baller House Party roaming DJ tool EVA! but that’s another story.) is awesome! We all know that guy that has to one up everyone. Well sure he has the remote app, but he has to unlock his iPhone to use it. HA! with Music Controls you can one up him for a change, and best of all in front of all your party guests. Oh, but my love of the Remote app is another story all together. I did not test Music Controls over one of those
FM transmiters. I don’t even think they work with iPhones. The sound quality trash on those anyway, so I can’t tell if it would still work. If it’s the kind that uses the headphone jack you’d be kewl, but the kind that uses the dock connection I have no idea. These next screen shots show the controls on the various screens.
The home screen status bar, all the controls are well in the status bar, and even though they are behind the song title they still work.
This is the Homescreen with popup controls.
Lockscreen.
The controls of Music Controls is very stock, and something you already know how to use. The learning curve is none existant. You will be using Music Controls in no time at all. I had Pandora Controls installed and was worried there might be an issue, but phoenix3200 (Who made Pandora Controls also) thought of that. I am only assuming he wrote in code to remove or overwrite Pandora Controls. What ever he did, it works, and it works well. I recomend Music Controls for anyone that regularly uses the iPod app while the device is locked,
but wishes they could do the same with all their other music apps. Music Controls is for you. This is just how it’s supossed to be, and $4.99 is a small price to pay to upgrade your listening experience.
iRoc out!