Enable Multi Touch Gestures on iPhone and iPad iOS 4.3.1 Without Xcode.

Remember the four and five finger multi-touch gestures shown off by Apple in the iOS 4.3 Beta for iPad. However, these features were only meant for the developers and never made it to the final public release of iOS 4.3.

Now, thanks to the folks at iFans.com we have a way to enable multitouch gestures in iOS 4.3.1. All you need is a jailbroken iPhone 4/3GS, iPod Touch or iPad running iOS 4.3.1 and some tweaking.

While this is not a very difficult tweak and anyone can enable multitouch gestures on their iOS device using this guide, I will advise you to backup your device in iTunes lest something go wrong. In case, you haven’t upgraded to iOS 4.3.1 read our previous guide to update and jailbreak iOS 4.3.1 using Redsn0w.

Full instructions to enable multi-touch gestures after the break.

We will be editing some plist files in this tutorial. Windows users can use plist editor while Mac users can use TextWrangler. If you have Xcode installed then no need for an additional application.

We need to edit three files on the iPhone or other iOS device that you are attempting to tweak. You can use USB based applications like iPhone Explorer or DiskAid to access and replace these files or via SSH using WinSCP or CyberDuck(Mac).

Instructions:

Step 1:

Navigate to Root > var > mobile > Library > Preferences > com.apple.springboard.plist

Copy this file to your computer and add the following two lines of code:

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

Step 2:

Navigate to Root > System > Library > CoreServices > SpringBoard.app > N90AP.plist

Update: N90AP.plist exists on iPhone 4 only. The corresponding file for iPhone 3GS is N88AP.plist, iPod Touch is N81AP.plist and for iPad K48AP.plist. Usually, there’s just one of this file’s kind in the specified folder, so it should not be very difficult to identify.

Add the following two lines:

<key>multitasking-gestures</key>
<true/>

Step 3:

Navigate to Root > Applications > Preferences.app > General.plist

Replace the following block of code with the new code.

<dict>
   <key>cell</key>
   <string>PSGroupCell</string>
   <key>footerCellClass</key>
   <string>MultitaskingGestureExplanationView</string>
   <key>id</key>
   <string>Mutltitasking_Gesture_Group</string>
   <key>requiredCapabilities</key>
   <array>
    <string>multitasking-gestures</string>
   </array>
  </dict>
  <dict>
   <key>cell</key>
   <string>PSSwitchCell</string>
   <key>default</key>
   <true/>
   <key>defaults</key>
   <string>com.apple.springboard</string>
   <key>id</key>
   <string>Mutltitasking_Gesture_Switch</string>
   <key>key</key>
   <string>SBUseSystemGestures</string>
   <key>label</key>
   <string>Multitasking_Gestures</string>
   <key>requiredCapabilities</key>
   <array>
    <string>multitasking-gestures</string>
   </array>
  </dict>

New Code:

<dict>
   <key>cell</key>
   <string>PSGroupCell</string>
   <key>footerCellClass</key>
   <string>MultitaskingGestureExplanationView</string>
   <key>requiredCapabilities</key>
   <array>
    <string>multitasking-gestures</string>
   </array>
  </dict>
  <dict>
   <key>cell</key>
   <string>PSSwitchCell</string>
   <key>default</key>
   <true/>
   <key>defaults</key>
   <string>com.apple.springboard</string>
   <key>key</key>
   <string>SBUseSystemGestures</string>
   <key>label</key>
   <string>Multitasking Gestures</string>
   <key>requiredCapabilities</key>
   <array>
    <string>multitasking-gestures</string>
   </array>
  </dict>

That’s it. We’re done. After you have saved these edit files put them back in their locations and restart or respring your iOS device for the changes to take effect.

Enabling Multitasking Gestures:

Go to Settings > General and scroll down to see Multitasking gestures.

You can now do the following three gestures using four fingers, though in my opinion the iPhone or iPod Touch screens are too small for these many fingers.

• Pinch to home screen
• Swipe up for Multitasking bar
• Swipe left/right to switch apps

Check out the demo video from Macrumors to see how the gestures work: