Enable Background Tasks on Iphone 3GS

If you’re like me, the greatest limiting factor on the Iphone is its inability to run more than one application at a time. In Apple’s infinite wisdom, they apparently decided that battery life and performance were more important than actual usefulness and productivity.  One of the best benefits to Jailbreaking your Iphone is the ability to run applications in the background.  So the next time you’re listening to Pandora  , and you decide you want to check movie times or hit up ebay, you can just send Pandora to the background, where it will continue playing your music until you return to it and close it. Nifty. You  should know that this is a HACK – not supported by Apple, and applications for the iPhone are not necessarily written to support being run in the background. That being said, here’s how to make it happen:

1) Jailbreak  your Iphone 3GS (if you haven’t, click here for instructions)

2) Once you have Cydia installed, open it, and search for Backgrounder, and install it. Make sure you get the 3.0 version.

3) Close Cydia, reboot your iphone and launch Backgrounder. Once you reboot, its actually already running.  Read the “how to use” and the Release Notes, as well as Known Issues.

4) there are no “settings” or configurable options for Backgrounder on the 3GS.  To keep a program running in the background, simply hold down the home key until Backgrounding Enabled appears. the app will go away, but if you’re streaming music it will continue to play. OPen and close the app as usual to continue to keep it running. When you’re ready to fully close the app, repeat the enable process- hold down the home key until Backgrounding Disabled appears briefly. The app is now closed.

5) Some things to be aware of:

• If you open too many apps simlutaneously you can crash the apps or the iPhone itself. I try to limit to 1 or 2 apps running in the background only.
• There’s no easy way to tell what applications are open in the background without using another utillity like SysInfoPlus, which you can also grab through Cydia.
• I’ve read that there are issues with apps that use voice control like Skype running in the background.