A new application is now available in Cydia called Backgrounder, which leaves applications running even after you hit the home button. Traditionally, the iPhone will terminate an application after the home button is depressed to return to the home screen. Backgrounder, as the name implies, lets applications run in the background allowing you to return to them in the future. This ability is great for applications such as MobileCase for downloading podcasts in the background while you surf Safari or check Mail, or for instant messaging applications to continue to run like BeeJive. The downside is that your battery life will be quickly depleted.

Like typical Cydia applications, you need to jailbreak your iPhone first.

According to the Backgrounder product page, to use Backgrounder, launch any application of your own choosing. After the application has launched, press and hold the home button until a pop-up appears stating “Backgrounding Enabled.” If you don’t need Backgrounding anymore, press and hold to get a pop-up stating “Backgrounding Disabled.” If you continue to hold the home button after either pop-ups appear, you will force the application to quit, which is what would normally happen anyways without Backgrounder.

The developers list the following limitations of the program:

Some applications may use the suspend/resume methods to perform important tasks, such as saving preferences. If the application is not properly terminated, these tasks may never be run.

While this extension should work for all applications, it is recommended to use it only for background-enabling AppStore applications (which are not allowed to include backgrounding code). If you wish to run a non-AppStore 3rd-party application in the background, it is suggested that you contact the author of the application and request that proper background support be added.

In my experiences, the program worked fine on BeeJive and on MobileCast. If you encounter a problem with a specific application, you can let us know in the comments.