Apple’s Maps app comes in handy for me more times than I can count when I need help getting to my destination, but for what it’s worth, the app’s voice navigation tends to become a nuisance when I’m trying to listen to music at the same time.

SilentMaps is a newly-released and free jailbreak tweak by iOS developer LonestarX that aims to resolve this problem by replacing the native Maps app’s voice-centric navigation with subtle sound effects that let you know when a critical turn on your route is near.

While voice navigation can be super helpful when you have no idea where you’re going, so too can a quick glance at the Maps screen when you’re observing the path ahead. SilentMaps plays a pinging-style sound when it’s nearing time to turn left or right, and you can adjust how soon the pinging sound plays so that the app doesn’t drive you crazy while you listen to music tracks.

In case you have no idea what we’re talking about, here’s a short video demonstration showing how the tweak works:

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You’ll notice that the app doesn’t speak a single word during the live navigation, and you probably heard the pinging sounds as the user approached a turn. This is what you can expect with SilentMaps.

Once installed, SilentMaps adds a preference pane to the Settings app where you can configure it to your liking:

Here, you can:

  • Toggle SilentMaps on or off on demand
  • Enable or disable the sound alerts for upcoming turns
  • Enable or disable vibration-based alerts for future turns
  • Manually enter distance filters for which warnings will sound/vibrate for a forthcoming turn

A respring isn’t necessary to save your changes, so a respring button isn’t present in the preference pane. On the other hand, we recommend closing the Maps app via the App Switcher and restarting it after making changes to the SilentMaps preference pane to ensure that your settings take effect.

In case you were looking for some suggestions for the distance filters, it would seem that you can’t go wrong with setting the values at .5 miles, .25 miles, 500 feet, and 100 feet; The meter-centric conversions for these values are 804.672;305;152.4;30.48.

It’s worth noting that SilentMaps is only intended for the native Maps app, and so it won’t work with third-party navigation apps such as Google Maps. This is a bit of a bummer, but perhaps a future update could change this.

If you’re interested in downloading SilentMaps for yourself, then you can download it from Woodmeat’s repository in Cydia or Sileo. The tweak should play nicely with all jailbroken handsets running iOS 11 and 12.

If you aren’t already using Woodmeat’s repository, then you can add it to your package manager of choice via the following URL:

https://woodmeat.yourepo.com/

What are your thoughts surrounding SilentMaps? Discuss in the comments section below.