panicLock: Lock all apps on your iPhone via an Activator gesture

Are you concerned about your privacy when you want to hand in your device to a friend? If yes, you should check out a new jailbreak tweak known as panicLock that allows you to protect the private data on your iPhone.

With panicLock, you can secretly lock all the apps on your iPhone via an Activator gesture. This means that after invoking the tweak, when you try to access an app, it will not open no matter how many times you tap on it to launch.

Along with locking all the apps, the tweak also disables Notification Center and Control Center, prevents opening the App Switcher or reading your notifications or any other functionality of iOS that you want to access. It ensures that all the private data on your iPhone are completely secure from intruders.

Once you activate panicLock via an Activator gesture, to disable it and gain access to all your apps and other stuffs, you simply have to invoke the gesture again.

There’s also a pro version of the tweak, but it supports iOS 7 only. The pro version allows you to choose the apps and parts of iOS that you want to lock. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support iOS 8 currently as the developer has only updated the free version of the tweak which restricts access to everything when you activate it.

Once you install panicLock, a new preference pane will be added to the stock Settings app dedicated to the tweak. From there, you can set an Activator gesture that allows you to invoke the tweak and lock all the apps, notifications, Control Center and other parts of iOS on your iPhone.

I noticed that once you enable panicLock, you can still access apps if you open them from Spotlight. This is a major issue that the developer should definitely fix otherwise it negates the whole purpose of the tweak.

If you have nosy friends who sneak into your private apps frequently, you should consider checking out panicLock. The tweak is available for free on Cydia’s BigBoss repository for free.