One of the most-hated features of the iPhone X was the notch, although fans certainly seem to have gotten used to it by now. Apple is now three years into offering notched iPhones, and the trend may not go away next year, either. While the notch may not cause a lot of problems, watching YouTube on any newer iPhone model means part of the video is blocked out. Thankfully, there is a YouTube jailbreak tweak that enables you to personalize the aspect ratio of the app so that the notch is no longer covering up part of the video.
Details on the YouTube jailbreak tweak
PiunikaWeb spotted the YouTube jailbreak tweak, which is called Zoom for YouTube. Newer iPhones come with an aspect ratio of 19:5:9 with a notch cut out of the top of the screen. Apple isn’t a fan of allowing users to personalize its products, so there is no way to change this without jailbreaking the device.
The problem is that when using YouTube on one of these newer iPhones to watch videos in full screen with it turned sideways, the notch covers part of the screen. This means that full-screen mode on the iPhone X and newer isn’t actually full-screen. The ideal situation would be to zoom into YouTube just enough that the picture is bigger, but not so much that the notch eats into the picture.
This is where the YouTube jailbreak tweak comes in.
How Zoom for YouTube works
Zoom for YouTube adjusts the values for the “Zoom to fill” feature on YouTube. This renders videos in an aspect ratio of 18:9, which removes the notch from the picture. There’s a Reddit thread with more information about the YouTube jailbreak tweak here.
The tweak can be downloaded from the developer’s Github repository here. It only works with the Cydia package manager, so it isn’t an option if you use any other jailbreak package managers. The developer might make it work with other package managers at some point, so it’s worth checking the repository for details on that if you’re interested but using a different manager.
Guides for jailbreaking
If you have the iPhone X, then it’s fairly easy to jailbreak using the checkra1n tool, which even works with iOS 13.2.3, the newest version as of the time of this writing. For a guide on how to use checkra1n on iOS 13.2.3, click here.
If you have an iPhone XS, XR or newer, then checkra1n won’t work because it requires the A5 through A11 chip, and last year’s models used the A12 chip. In this case, jailbreaking is more difficult, but it’s still possible if you haven’t upgraded to the newest version of iOS. For a guide on how to jailbreak A12-equipped models using the unc0ver tool, click here.
