Saurik launched a duo of essential upgrades for Cydia Installer on Wednesday that are expected to “drastically improve” the performance of Cydia for users of various languages; Chinese in particular.
Version 1.1.30, which superseded version 1.1.29 just hours later with an additional bug fix, is available now. It is recommended all jailbreakers grab the update the next time they find themselves launching Cydia, if they haven’t already.
Major changes in Cydia 1.1.29
Saurik notes in the 1.1.29 change log, which was the larger of the two updates on Wednesday, that Chinese users should notice the biggest difference in performance, but other users, including English, may also be able to reap minor performance benefits thanks to the changes that come bundled up in the update.
Among the various things Saurik has done is implement improvements to the way Cydia handles translations of package names and descriptions. Downloading them used to be quite a slow and painstaking process for some in the new 64-bit version of Cydia, but thanks to Saurik’s continuous work, APT (the software behind Cydia’s GUI) can now filter files that you do and don’t need more efficiently.
Saurik also cites a correction for an intermittent problem that could affect various users as they’d try to find packages in Cydia. Sometimes users would report being unable to find certain packages even though it made absolutely no sense for them not to show up. It seems this was related to a problem with the package catalog array, and the solution was quite mind-bending to even the creator of Cydia himself.
The biggest improvement of all in this release has to do with the way Cydia sorts packages in its catalog, a process the app handles on a local level on your device. In particular, this is where Chinese (Traditional) users are going to see the biggest performance gains, as Cydia’s sorting algorithm wasn’t very effective at sorting packages in this language in “stroke order.”
Saurik got around this problem by utilizing a special cache that is capable of fetching “close enough” sorting results, and so while the catalog cache won’t always be up to date, it will still cache successful results from previous Cydia executions that enable the user to still search for and sort through available “cached” packages more efficiently.
In addition to that, he tweaked some of his algorithms a little further and even converted some of them to a more efficient language. The end result was he was able to improve the loading performance of Cydia for all users, whether they’re using the Chinese language on their device or not.
Version 1.1.30 – a small bug fix release
A few hours later, Saurik followed up with a smaller update, version 1.1.30.
Without a detailed change log like we see in version 1.1.29, it’s presumed to be a minor bug fix update. One Redditor points out that it appears to fix a problem with installing purchased items through Cydia.
Long story short, Cydia 1.1.30 should be the fastest and most reliable 64-bit build of Cydia yet. If you haven’t already installed it, you should launch Cydia, refresh your sources, and install it whenever you have the chance to.
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Have you noticed any improvements in your Cydia performance yet since updating? Share your experience in the comments section below.