A little while back, I posted about some undocumented SpringBoard settings on the iPhone. Many readers seemed to enjoy learning about these settings, but they wanted to avoid performing the esoteric property list edits needed to adjust them.

In response, I give you the following: controls that actually show up in your Settings application and allow direct manipulation. Here's what you need to do. You will need secure shell access to your iPhone's command line (ssh).

1. Start by backing up your /Applications/ Preferences.app/ Settings-iPhone.plist file. Make sure you copy the file to a safe place so you can recover it if needed.
2. Replace that file with http://pastie.textmate.org/124408. Copy the entire property list from the field at the bottom of the screen and paste it into a new text file. Rename that file to Settings-iPhone.plist and place it in /Applications/Preferences.app.
3. Run settings, and voila! I divided the settings into two groups. The first group works instantly and you can immediately see their results. For the second group, you must restart SpringBoard (my restart utility may help) for the settings to take effect.

Not all preferences appear in your iPhone Settings application. As I discussed rather thoroughly in my Modding Mac OS X book, it's not that hard to dig through applications and discover undocumented--or in this case unpromoted--preferences that add spice to your Mac or iPhone. I decided to put the iPhone's SpringBoard to the test. That's the app that runs your main home page. This core application contained over a dozen user-settable preferences. I tested them all and selected my six favorites. If you have access to the command line, you can start having fun with these settings yourself. This post shows you how.

I was talking to iPhone Developer NerveGas earlier today and he was thinking about what it would take to put a one-touch call button in with your other iPhone Applications. I reminded him that OpenURL could open phone numbers as well as web pages, and that I already had a "Call Home" button on my iPhone. Of course, he virtually smacked his head and said: "Oh yes, iPhone Apper".

Whether using iPhone Apper or OpenURL, just use the tel prefix and your phone number, e.g. tel:212-555-1212.

Update: By reader request, here's my dreadful icon.

Update 2: TUAW reader orijinal offers a really good point: the iPhone Apper page publishes "recently built apps", complete with Call Home instances that reveal your phone numbers in the URL. You may just want to use Open URL instead.

If you want to run lots of Apps on your 1.1.1 iPhone or iPod touch but don't want to install SummerBoard, you can download this SpringBoard patcher that provides you with multi-page support.

Copy off Springboard, patch it, put it back onto your device and reboot. It's what I'm running on my iPhone and touch right now and it works beautifully.

Of course, once you have all that space available to work with, what are you going to do with it? I put together a TUAW webpage launcher using the OpenURL kit I posted about a few weeks ago. Now I just tap to launch TUAW.

If you'd like to download your own TUAW launcher, you can grab a copy from the Samples folder in my OpenURL kit. You'll also find instructions there for creating your own website launchers.

Over at website "Jon's Thoughts on Everything", you can find a web-based equivalent of OpenURL. I actually found it harder to use. For me, it involved more work than just adding an icon and editing two lines of text but you might enjoy using it.

Although the iPhone/iTouch Dev team hasn't published a general jailbreak yet, the developer community is working hard and furious to make sure that your arrival will be pleasant when you get there. Today brings this marvelous SpringBoard patch from Nicholas "Drudge" Penree, NerveGas and Pumpkin. It allows you to add as many 3rd party applications to SpringBoard as you'd like and offers a kicking-new paging feature; notice the paging dots at the bottom of SpringBoard.

The trip1pogostick patch is available from Drudge's beta repository. To access it, you must jailbreak your iPhone and access this link from Mobile Safari.

This morning, we were having a lot of trouble getting third-party iPhone apps to show up properly and run on the home screen. Despite the fact that Apple has added extra protections to SpringBoard and created a list of approved identifiers, iPhone hacker asap18 has managed to port several applications to the iPhone and gotten them to appear properly on the home screen. For now, only 15 icons can be added this way--the last spot appears to be reserved for iTunes. The apps have been tested and are working fine.

He has also tracked down an option for International capabilities in SpringBoard, which may lead to foreign language Application support. This will be needed in countries like Germany and France, where the iPhone will shortly debut.

This is a developing story, and we'll be keeping an eye on it but remember this success is only in regards to running apps on the 1.1.1 firmware. Unlocked iPhones still run the danger of being bricked when upgraded to the 1.1.1 firmware, so if you have an unlocked iPhone do not upgrade to the latest firmware.

All the buzz this evening is about developer "lg" and his wild plunge into customizing SpringBoard, the home screen application you see every time you power on your iPhone. Turns out he figured out how to burrow inside SpringBoard and get it to scroll so users don't have to use cumbersome application launchers and dock extenders. SummerBoard currently extends SpringBoard to add scrolling and wallpaper, with further features promised in future releases.

The secret seems to lie in tricking SpringBoard into loading custom routines and seizing control of the application through the back door. Lg calls his modified system "SummerBoard", a name I find especially droll--although I think "SpringRoll" might have better described the software.

The new software is currently available using Installer.app, which we have discussed in previous posts.

Now to the down and gritty. This is a first release. It's pretty cool but it's still a first release. I ended up rebooting my phone 5 times before I got it working. I had to launch an app, and then force-quit it by pressing Home about 4-8 seconds. Then it worked really well. So keep looking for updates. It's still getting debugged.

Lg says the software works by loading items into memory after launch. I took a look around and found /Library/SummerBoard.framework. This contains an alternate com.apple.springboard property list, a short dynamic library and a framework file. This seems to be what gets loaded upon launch on top of SpringBoard.

Congrats to lg for this clever hack.