Watchdog brings true multitasking to your jailbroken iPhone

joeajjan · July 17, 2015

i have some good news for fans of the Backgrounder tweak. Watchdog is a new beta jailbreak tweak that brings true app backgrounding to iOS 8 – iOS 8.4. You might be wondering what exactly does it mean to background apps. When you close an app, it will still continue to run in the background for a few minutes until it stops (depending on the type of the app). This means that all the tasks that are running within the app will be stopped until the next time that you open it.

With Watchdog, you can keep certain apps active and running in the background even if they are not currently open. To background an app, you’ll have to launch the App Switcher and tap on its app icon. Doing so adds a tiny orange dot next to the app in the Home screen and the app switcher indicating that it is running in the background. To remove an app from the background state, all you have to tap on its app icon again in the App Switcher.

Placing apps in the background will definitely have a negative impact on your iPhone’s battery life as they will keep on running continuously as if they are in the foreground.

One of the cases where Watchdog would come in handy is when you’d like to upload large amount of photos and videos to Google Photos. The app requires you to keep it open for the upload to finish however with Watchdog, you can simply background it and use other apps while the upload gets completed.

Another benefit of Watchdog is that if an app is backgrounded, it will automatically launch after restarting or respringing your device. Deselecting it in the App Switcher before a restart/respring will prevent this from happening.

Since the tweak is currently in beta. You’ll need to add the following source to Cydia first: http://allankerr.github.io/repo/. Once done, you should be able to search for the tweak and install it on your iPhone or iPad.

Watchdog has a great potential and can be used for many different purposes other than the one mentioned above.