Icy: alternative to Cydia
Chris Eissens
The guys from Ripdev released a new direct Cydia competitor called Icy. Check out the demo and speed test video after the break.
What is Icy?
Icy is our take on the freeware package manager that uses APT repositories to install and remove packages available in another free iPhone installer application, Cydia. The goal was to create a fast, lightweight and more slick solution that is easy and cool to use. Icy is only at version 1.0, but we’re already working on the improvements.
IcyIcy 1.0 is pretty simple, and we plan on keeping it that way. It will only refresh repositories when you tell it to, and will not scroll pages of cool looking terminal text when installing or removing a package. Instead, it presents the installation process in a friendly and cool manner – enhanced with crisp black and white interface featuring icons by quite famous artist Max Rudberg. Icy uses the same DPKG that Cydia does, but without APT that handles downloading of repository indeces and packages – we chose to use a combination of libcurl and sqlite for that.
Icy only downloads headers when refreshing repositories, so it won’t download again the indeces that were not changed – this saves on your traffic and makes the refreshes faster. It will pick up existing Cydia repositories and also will allow you to add more through its Add Source interface.
When we saw that Apple is moving towards supporting landscape mode more in the upcoming 3.0 firmware, we thought – hey, landscape is useful when browsing, too! So Icy supports landscape as well.
How To Install
From Cydia: Add a new source http://apt.ripdev.com and then install Icy from the Packaging category.
From Installer: Icy is available in the System category of Installer.
Demo Video:
Speed test: Icy vs Cydia
\\ tags: Cydia / Jailbreak, Icy, installer, ripdev
March 31st, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Most repos are going to ban Icy because it does not display repo advertisements used to pay for bandwidth etc.
March 31st, 2009 at 3:54 pm
cydia has more stuff so it takes more time to load
March 31st, 2009 at 4:37 pm
i installed it but i got no categories
March 31st, 2009 at 5:15 pm
if ur categories don’t show up give it a little time, they eventually load up, probably a slow on the 1st run
March 31st, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Nice clean interface, quick to load, I do like it better than Cydia. It has the list of everything I have installed and once it finished updating the first time it even showed me the one update I knew I had pending. Very nice!
March 31st, 2009 at 6:27 pm
more info is coming in 1.1 this week
if categories dont show up try add more sources (well, all that icy will show) and thats it
i cant get to work 90% of repositories i use but that will be fixed i suppose.
Really good app even if it needs more features
i love install animation it so smooth :-]
March 31st, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Cant get categories to load at all.
i even added all the sources Icy has to offer.
any advice?
April 1st, 2009 at 12:24 am
I am very skeptical about downloading things on the 31 or 1st of April. April Fools has reached a whole new level now-a-days. I really hope this isnt an april fools joke.
April 1st, 2009 at 1:48 pm
[…] RipDev, the developers who created Installer app, create ICY. A fast, lightweight and more slick solution to replace Cydia. More info on this link :http://iphonefreakz.com/2009/03/31/i…tive-to-cydia/ […]
April 1st, 2009 at 5:37 pm
I can’t get Icy to stay open. It loads then seems to be working but then crashes to the home screen after about 5 seconds after loading each and every time. I tried installing from Installer 4.0 and now I just tried from Cydia with the same results. So,, I’m uninstalling it. It don’t work for me. :(
April 6th, 2009 at 3:33 am
I love this! I’m ha to see the rip dev making an awesome app! I mean really, the old installer were way better than installer 4 so I’m happy the rip dev has made a great app installer!
April 11th, 2009 at 5:20 am
Hey i m not getting categories only “recent package” is showing
April 11th, 2009 at 11:40 am
Hey you need to refresh the sources
April 11th, 2009 at 11:41 am
Is anyone finding that if they install winterboard and turn off their phone the phone wont start up???? it will just stay on the apple logo
April 12th, 2009 at 4:20 am
I find that sometimes when I turn my phone off if I try to turn it back on it won’t turn back on until after about 30 seconds to a minute. It’s weird. But I figured it’s just one of those things you deal with having a jailbroken iPhone. I don’t know if it has anything to do with Winterboard though.
April 12th, 2009 at 4:43 am
No but the thing is it will just stay on the apple logo it will not boot up at all. I will wait about 2 hours for anything and nothing will a happen. So then i have to put it in DFU mode and restore it. I might add im on 3.0 it only happens when i install winterboard everything els works fine.
July 17th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Does it work on version 2.2?
December 7th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
hola!
i got my iphone from the UK and i live in South Africa. i want to know how i can install some of the categories on icy. whenever i try to install a category it says that it can’t resolve host name (repo.smxy.org). what do i need to do to get icy to work??
thankx
July 19th, 2010 at 4:28 pm
me tooo