Love Auxo, hate Auxo: the iPhone's best worst tweak of all time.

I simply love the Cydia tweak called Auxo. I mean, I really really love it. It's world's apart in terms of design and functionality and overall finish than any other single iOS tweak I've ever downloaded from the "anti-App Store" known as Cydia, where it exists on an island of misfit toys for all the apps and modifications Apple has refused to let reside in their own digital marketplace.

If you haven't heard of Auxo, it's a breathtakingly good multitasking/app switcher replacement for Apple's default and decidedly boring, minimal-use multitasking tray on the iPhone. Quite honestly, as someone who has always been disgusted with some of the bad UI design that goes into some Cydia tweaks, this however puts Apple's current iteration of the multitasking functionality to shame. And I mean that in a big bad way. First off, Auxo gives you screenshots--yes actual thumbnail screenshots--of the last state of recently used apps. This is a simple concept used in almost every modern mobile platform now except on iOS, and Auxo does it in a beautiful, seamless way. Next, dismissing apps you don't need is a breeze. Just swipe a thumbnail away and it's gone. Then, if you want them all gone, hold down one app, and you're asked if you'd want each app closed. Tap yes and you're done. No more having to close out each app individually, not to mention the skill and precision it used to take to tap that little "minus" sign on each one correctly. Then to top it all off, if you swipe the Auxo multitasking panel to the right, revealed is a much improved media player with controls that are actually separated enough so that you can never hit a wrong button by mistake, and then one more swipe gets you an entire quick-access panel for all the most used toggles for your iPhone's most important utilities and functions. That includes silence, rotation, airplane mode, flashlight, cellular data, brightness, etc. In all Auxo is my single favorite thing that I've ever installed on my iPhone other than entire updated OS versions.

Here's the problem, and the reason I hate Auxo: it doesn't work. I don't know about every single device and OS version. But in an iPhone 4S and a 3rd gen iPod Touch running iOS 6.1, it crashes. And crashes. And crashes. It's unusable at this point. This post, more than anything, exists solely as a plea to those awesome guys building Auxo at an excellent price of only $1.99 saying, I can't wait for these bugs to be squashed. Auxo, I love you and hate you. We'll speak soon.