WhatsApp has always been among the most popular apps on iOS, and this popularity stems from the fact that it is simple, people like using it, and if anything can totally replace text messages in the near future, it just might be WhatsApp. The app doesn’t have too many features, so it is not really surprising that we don’t get to see a lot of Cydia tweaks aimed at WhatsApp being released. Among the few available for it, we’ve seen MessageSwiper and WhatsApp UnlimitedMSG in the past, but the new WhatsAtor might be among the most useful of this kind. WhatsAtor is based on Activator and lets you start composing a message for WhatsApp from anywhere in iOS. You just have to perform the gesture of your choice to invoke the interactive composition window, which in turn launches WhatsApp once you have typed a complete message. The tweak works on the lock screen and within other apps, so it can come in handy on a lot of occasions.
Since WhatsAtor is based solely on Activator, the tweak does not have a menu of its own in the stock Settings app. To configure it, head to the Activator menu, choose a universal gesture (like Shake ‘n Bake) for it, and you are done. It is not necessary to go for a universal gesture but if you don’t do that, the tweak becomes a little limited.
A WhatsAtor composition dialog comes up whenever you perform the configured gesture. The developer has also given it a rainbow touch in terms of the visuals; the dialog box cycles through several colors. There aren’t a lot of other components in the composition dialog, apart from ‘Send’ and ‘Cancel’ buttons. When you try to send a message written in WhatsAtor, WhatsApp is launched on the contact selection screen. After selecting a contact, the message you typed earlier shows up inside the appropriate WhatsApp thread.
While WhatsAtor can be useful for many, one can’t help but feel that the tweak misses out on being really great. It would have been great had the developer added a recipient field to the WhatsAtor dialog, rather than merely routing users to WhatsApp. Another addition in a future update can be the ability to reply to received messages right from their notifications, like the Messages tweak does for the SMS app.
WhatsAtor is a free tweak, and can be downloaded from the BigBoss repo of the Cydia store.
