How to disable Multitasking and Background wallpapers in jailbroken iOS 4 on iPhone 3G to avoid Sluggish Performance [Guide]

If you’ve already jailbroken and unlocked your iPhone 3G with iOS 4, you must have noticed that it gets really slow after some usage. This is due to the low amount of RAM in the device which isn’t suitable for multitasking. Plus iPhone 3G also feels a little hot after a while and not to forget, the battery takes a major hit. While restoring the device and starting over the whole jailbreak process seems like a fix, here’s a simpler fix without losing any of your data.

This guide assumes that you’ve already jailbroken/unlocked your iPhone 3G with iOS 4.

Here’s how:

  1. Connect your iPhone 3G to your computer.
  2. Open redsn0w, click browse and point it to iOS 4 firmware and follow the instructions on the screen. Remember to disable battery percentage, wallpapers, and multitasking. [Vista users might need to run redsn0w as administrator]. See picture below:Screen shot 2010-06-22 at 11.40.44 PM
  3. Continue the process normally until the iPhone 3G is jailbroken again. When the iPhone reboots, it won’t have multitasking, home screen wallpapers or battery percentage enabled, but it’ll feel fast as hell after using the annoyingly slow disabled features.IMG_0005

This is how iPhone 3G will look like without the disabled features, enabled.

Enjoy!

About the Author

Technology enthusiast, Internet addict, photography fan, movie buff, music aficionado.

36 comments

  1. I just remove multitasking an background images and the iPhone feels good again.

    I only left the battery porcentage, I don't think this could slow down iPhone :S

  2. strangely, i did what's written, it worked but when i open apps, it still takes ram as it used to when multitasking was enabled

  3. i enabled battery percentage in mine
    where can I activate this option in the phone settings?
    i cant find it :(

  4. I think I stumbled upon a better answer. I found my phone to be pretty much unusable while I had both the multitasking and the background images enabled through redsn0w, so I re-jailbroke my phone (3g) and disabled just the background image but left the multitasking on (because I absolutely love it and can no longer live without it). I don't have a background image but the phone is much more usable (if a little bit slower than before 4.0). Try it!

  5. Then why upgrade to iOS 4.0? We already had backgrounder and wallpapers. Without these enabled, what are we really gaining?

  6. 1. SSH to SystemLibraryCoreServicesSpringBoard.app and edit the file N82AP.plist
    2. Alter the key “multitasking” to enable/disable multi-tasking alter this key

    <key>multitasking</key>
    <true/>to this:
    <key>multitasking</key>
    <false/>

  7. Just to make sure of it, since the answer has not been very clear about it:
    Can we use redsn0w a second time on an already jailbroken iPhone WITHOUT loosing any installed package from cydia ?

    Thanks.

  8. “1. SSH to SystemLibraryCoreServicesSpringBoard.app and edit the file N82AP.plist
    2. Alter the key “multitasking” to enable/disable multi-tasking alter this key

    <key>multitasking</key>
    <true/>to this:
    <key>multitasking</key>
    <false/> ”

    Does this work on iPhone4 as well? i PRefer multifl0w over apple.

  9. on my iTouch, there isn't a N82AP.plist, but a N88…but still don't edit that. Instead edit the N72AP.plist file, FYI. If you look closely, the marketing name key in the files you will see that N88 says iPhone, whereas N72 says iPod. Just so you know.

  10. No need to re-jailbreak anymore.
    Just install zToggle via Cydia. This program allows you to enable/disable multitasking and background wallpaper on iPhone 3G.

  11. but this will also wipe your apps and settings, no?

    if you would confirm that apps and settings remain intact, I’ll disable that thing right away… iPhone 3G has been terrible after 4.1

  12. I have 3G with jailbreak and Sim-Unlock. Will I have to Unlock it again after the new jailbreak?

Leave a comment