Stride adds pattern unlock to iPhone

iPhone owners bored of punching in a PIN and looking enviously across at Android’s pattern unlock system finally have an alternative, thanks to a newly released tweak for the iOS smartphone. Adam Bell‘s new app Stride adds pattern unlock to jailbroken iPhones, going several stages further than Android’s simple join-the-dots system and allowing users to train their handset to recognize pretty much any gesture.

The examples given are simple characters or symbols, but if you’re careful enough then registering a signature is also apparently possible. It will work with or without a regular PIN being set, though when that native security is in place there’s the option to skip it or not.

So far Stride is iPhone-only, though Adam tells us that a version of the app for the iPad is “definitely planned.” Obviously you’ll need to have a jailbroken iPhone, since this isn’t the sort of thing Apple approves of in the App Store.

One thing we’ve found about pattern-style unlock systems is that we’re often more likely to use them than PIN codes; considering how frequently phones get lost or stolen, and how much of our digital lives are stored on them, making sure your handset is secure is essential. Stride for iPhone is available from the Cydia download store now, priced at $2.99.