How do I change the dialer on my iPhone?

Below are instruction on how to manually change the dialer on your iPhone. The “dialer” is the keypad used to dial a phone number when in your Phone.

If you are on firmware 2.x – When you jailbreak your iPhone/iPod Touch, the Cydia application will be added to your SpringBoard with the rest of your applications. You will want to go into Cydia and search for the OpenSSH application. If it is not already installed, you will need to install it.

If you are on firmware 1.1.4 or below – you will need to use the installer.app and install both BSD Subsystem and OpenSSH on your iPhone (in that order).

Below are the rest of the instructions which are the same for all current firmware:
If you are on a PC…you will then need to install WinSCP on your computer. Macs come with OpenSSH but if you’d like some alternatives check here. To connect to WinSCP you will need to go into your Settings application on your iPhone and then into the Wi-fi option, click on the little arrow next to the Wi-Fi you are connected to and get the ip address. Now open WinSCP on your computer….the Host Name is your ip address (with the periods) the user name is root and the password is alpine. Don’t worry about the Private key file, you don’t need to put anything there. Hit login.

Once WinSCP opens, the dialer goes into /Applications/MobilePhone.app. Once you are in that folder you will see all of the stock files for your MobilePhone application this is where you are going to drag your new files to.

Create a folder somewhere on your computer and name it the title of the dialer you would like to add (ex…RetroPhoneDialer). In this folder you will want to put all of the files from the dialer you have downloaded. Once you have put all the files into your “RetroPhoneDialer” folder…open the folder so you can see all of the files.

Warning: What you are about to do will overwrite your stock dialer…make sure you make a backup of the MobilePhone.app folder that is one your iPhone before you begin. You can do this by clicking and dragging the MobilePhone.app folder out of WinSCP to your desktop and selecting Copy.

Once you have your dialer folder open (the one on your computer…”RetroPhoneDialer”), you will want to select all of the files inside it and drag them into the MobilePhone.app folder in WinSCP and hit Copy. You will then want to select Yes to all. Note: your iPhone has to be on for the file to transfer! Once it is done transferring…restart your iPhone and go into Phone and check your keypad…TaDa!!…you will see your new dialer!!

If you are downloading a dialer that is in a zip file…you will have to drag the folder out of the zip file to your computer. This unzips the file so that you can add it’s files to the MobilePhone.app folder through WinSCP. If the dialer you are downloading is a .rar file you can use WinRAR to open it (you have to download WinRAR it to your computer). You will then need to drag the folder out of the zip file to your computer to unzip it.

Note: Some dialers are made for a specific firmware so be sure to read all the file info before downloading and adding the dialer.

Also check out our; How do I get themes onto my iPhone? post, How do I add a dock onto my iPhone? post and our Adding Wallpapers to Your iPhone post.

Dialer Before and After Screenshots:
Please note the credit to the designer is displayed by hovering over the screenshot of the dialer. If you would like to download the dialer shown below…just click on it!

If you have any further questions…email help@appleiphoneschool.com
If you would like to add information about this process please use the comments!! Thanks