How to enable multitasking gestures on a jailbroken iPad 1 running iOS 4.3.1

Apple gave us a bit of a tease in iOS 4.3 beta 2 i think with the four fingers multitasking gestures.

To bad they removed this features in the following betas and in de final release of iOS 4.3. This cool feature will probably be introduced in iOS 5 that will come out some where this fall.

For all of you that can’t wait untill then, here is a short “how to” on how to enable this feature in iOS 4.3.1.

First a little but a well known warning!!!!! don’t proceed beyond this point 😉 if you’re not 100% sure on what you are doing. This could break your iPad, it might blow-up or shatter into a 1000 pieces 🙂

Step 1. Make sure you have a jailbroken iPad1 running iOS 4.3.1

Step 2. Install iFile from Cydia

Step 3. Start iFile and navigate to “/var/mobile/Library/Preferences”

Step 4. Make a backup of the file “com.apple.springboard.plist”

Step 5. Open and edit the file “com.apple.springboard.plist”

Step 6. Add a new key to this file called “SBUseSystemGestures” and set it to the value “True” (look at the content of the file for some examples)

It should look something like this

<key>SBUseSystemGestures</key>
<true/>

Step 7. Save the file.

Step 8. Reboot your device.

Step 9. Multitasking gestures should work now. Try it 🙂 swipe with four fingers up, left and right or pinch to exit an application.

Note! you will not find the settings under the general settings. To disable it again, remove the key or set the value to false 🙂

Good luck.

Please read the warning again 😉