Fix Blank White Icons at Home Screen or SpringBoard on iOS

After easily jailbreaking my wife’s iPad running iOS 4.3.3 from JailBreakMe website, I’ve never updated to any new version of iOS because there wasn’t any untethered jailbreaks after that. Recently I found out that pod2g has created an untethered 5.0.1 jailbreak for non-A5 devices which means my wife’s iPad is supported. So I upgraded the iPad to iOS 5.0.1 from iTunes, ran the latest redsn0w 0.9.10b3 for Windows and followed the simple instructions. At first I got stuck at exploiting with limera1n window then I found out I did not correctly enter into DFU (Device Firmware Upgrade) mode. I tried again and this time the whole jailbreaking iOS 5.0.1 process went without a hitch.

After rebooting the iPad for the first time after jailbreaking, I noticed that some of the icons such as Contacts, Notes, Maps, Game Center and Mail at the Springboard or Home Screen became white in color. I am still able to launch the application without any problems though.

I tried rebooting by powering off and then turn it on again but the icons are still in white color. Then I read about Respring and gave it a try. All I needed to do is install an app called Respring from Cydia and then open the application which will automatically respring the iPad to the lock screen. After unlocking the screen, I noticed that all the white icons are restored to the default icons. Basically respring means killing the Springboard.app application that handles the user interface on top of the iOS.