Sunday, June 14, 2009

Hacking iPhone SMS Alerts

I couldn't find a good way to change my SMS alert sounds on my iPhone w/o running winterboard or some other UI program. Instead this is a way to do it w/o installing any additional software.

Requirements: Jailbroken iPhone w/SSH, Mac of some sorts with iTunes and SSH/SCP client. or Windows for some of it.

1) Make a backup of all the original files (/Applications/Preferences.app/English.lproj/Sounds.strings and /System/Library/Audio/UISounds/sms-received*.caf)
2) Convert whatever mp3 you want to make the alert a caf file. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1348 to convert it to aiff, and then rename the .aif file to .caf.
3) Rename the file(s) to sms-received[1-6].caf, and make a note of what number you create (this is necessary if you want to change the name of it).
4) Copy the newly created file back over to your iPhone, the following mapping applies. 1-Tri-tone, 2-Chime, 3-Glass,4-Horn,5-Bell,6-Electronic.
5) From now on this requires a Mac, or someway to do it on windows that I don't know.
6) Copy your back of Sounds.strings to Sounds.strings.new
7) Run plutil -convert xml1 Sounds.strings.new
8) Keeping the above mapping in mind, change whatever name you want in the now XML version of Sounds.strings.new, and save the file.
9) Run plutil -convert binary1 Sounds.strings.new
10) Copy this Sounds.strings.new to your iPhone, overwriting /Applications/Preferences.app/English.lproj/Sounds.strings.
11) Enjoy and don't complain to me if you mess something up.

[Edit: Apparently I can't use google correctly (Another Tutorial), but that ones lacks the ability to change the labels]