okay i have searched endlessly both thru here and Google have managed to find a program to do it for you apk edit works great for market apps not so great for system apps tried the way described in the icon thread and that also failed get errors like icon disappears or just doesn't perform its function i.e not making phone calls,opening settings etc... if any one is willing to shed some light on how i can accomplish this please help me
djnarcotics said:
okay i have searched endlessly both thru here and Google have managed to find a program to do it for you apk edit works great for market apps not so great for system apps tried the way described in the icon thread and that also failed get errors like icon disappears or just doesn't perform its function i.e not making phone calls,opening settings etc... if any one is willing to shed some light on how i can accomplish this please help me
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If the only reason you're wanting to change the Icon is for how it appears on your homescreen, then I'd say the easiest way is to use Desktop Visualizer, available in the Market. You can alter/edit/change how the icons are on your homescreen, but the icon will still be the original from within your app drawer, if you use that method. But yea, if it's just for homescreen appearance, that's the easiest way. If that's not what you're after, and you want to change the icon completely, then I beleive you could use 7zip to open up the .apk, find the png for the icon, and replace/alter/edit. I did it that way once, but it was just for a couple of icons, and I was more or less just messing around with things. But it worked fine. Then I learned of Desktop Visualizer and said forget about it.
Also, if you're using a rom that supports easy theming - CM7 with the theme chooser, or MIUI with the theme manager - you could build a quick theme with all of the icons you want to change. I did this with the Aelous HD theme for MIUI by adding the icons that weren't already themed. You put the icons in the "icons" folder with the format packagename.png - it usually looks something like com.something.something.png. I'm sure there's a similar way with CM7 themes.
Easy Way
I use ADW EX. It lets you easily change any app icon. It's a paid app but is really worth it for all the extras. Be aware though, that if you're using a sense rom, ADW will also replace your rosie. Another cool thing about ADW is that there are a ton of icon packs available or you can just dowload pngs from the web and use those.
I'm not 100% sure but I think Launcher Pro also lets you change icons in a similar way.
Well I use go launcher which does basically everything the other launchers do but I want to change the app drawer icons themselves o tried the 7zip method but no avail either the app icon completely disappears or it won't open at all. I.e. browser and system.changing the phone.apk makes the my phone go into FC mania.any other way or is there something I'm missing or just not doing right
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
djnarcotics said:
Well I use go launcher which does basically everything the other launchers do but I want to change the app drawer icons themselves o tried the 7zip method but no avail either the app icon completely disappears or it won't open at all. I.e. browser and system.changing the phone.apk makes the my phone go into FC mania.any other way or is there something I'm missing or just not doing right
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
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Click to collapse
The way I do it may seem like the hard way but this is what I do!
I use a program called App Manager 4.9 (google it or search for it on here)
I extract the apk I want to MOD from my EVO using root explorer or if you're on windows and you got ADB working properly, I use the program called DroidExplorer
Anyways, assuming that you got App Manager 4.9 up and running....I place the .apk into the modding folder...bring up App Manager 4.9 and hit 22...select my project, hit 9 for decompile....once that's done, I go into the project folder and find the folder drawable-hdpi....sometimes is called drawable-hdpi-v4 depending on what rom you're using.....I then find the icon I want to change...change it!....and then run up app manager again, press 22...select my project....then hit 11 for compile...once that's done....I either use droidexplorer once again and place it in the correct folder it came from or connect the device to the computer, open up usb storage and place it in a folder...use root explorer to then move it to the correct folder....reboot the device once everything is said and done, and BOOM!...is done!!
Like I said, this is too much work for some people BUT I rather do it this way because I know is done right and I don't have to settle for temporary half ass apps trying do it!
Changing Icon
k2buckley said:
If the only reason you're wanting to change the Icon is for how it appears on your homescreen, then I'd say the easiest way is to use Desktop Visualizer, available in the Market. You can alter/edit/change how the icons are on your homescreen, but the icon will still be the original from within your app drawer, if you use that method. But yea, if it's just for homescreen appearance, that's the easiest way. If that's not what you're after, and you want to change the icon completely, then I beleive you could use 7zip to open up the .apk, find the png for the icon, and replace/alter/edit. I did it that way once, but it was just for a couple of icons, and I was more or less just messing around with things. But it worked fine. Then I learned of Desktop Visualizer and said forget about it.
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Click to collapse
Hello,
I have a Samsung Galaxy Young GT-S6312 Dual sim, rooted, deodexed, working cwm.
I used root explorer and extracted secsettings.apk and opened the folder which I extracted. In that I went to res/drawable-hdpi and replaced ic_system_settings.png wit my own icon. I archived the folder and renamed it to .apk and pushed it to system/app and replaced the original apk. I rebooted my phone and got a boot loop. Next time I extracted systemui.apk and went to folder, opened res/drawable-mdpi and replaced the settings icon whith my own icon. After the phone rebooted there was no change in the icon. I actually wanted to change the settings icon fully like on the home screen, app drawer and once I open settings also. Please suggest a method for doing it thanks in advance.
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My Device:- Samsung Galaxy Young GT-S6312
Rom:- Holo Inspire v1.1
I really love the new graphic style in Android ICS, especially for the blue fades that replaced those horrible plain black backgrounds in almost every list/app/screen. However, the app drawer background is still completely dark, and I was wondering...is there a .png or a file in the android framework, that lets us customizing the app drawer background opacity or better, the entire drawer background image?
The settings blue fade background would be a lot better of plain black, for example. Can you at least point me to the right direction? Thanks in advance!
The app drawer is part of the launcher, I believe, so poking around inside the launcher's .apk file would probably be a good place to start. That said, I probably know less about modding Android than you do, so I could be dead wrong...
Actually, I think this too - despite I talked about the 'framework'. The problem is, that a common android application is made up by a res folder, full of .pngs and pictures, and a lot of other folders that contain all the .xmls for the app itself, that I never achieved to edit in any way. And because I'm sure the drawer background is part of a style .xml, probably being defined by a string such as "background_color=0,0,0/transparency=0" (example taken by some .xmls edited on PC, I actually have no idea of how these things are written in android), it could be useful to know where to find something like that or how to edit this kind of values ;P
C'mon, I can't believe everyone actually never tought of changing the drawer background! I mean...this is one of the first feature that you -devs of several alt. launchers- will have to add, and so far (think to ADW) it has not been so difficoult! So...please, if you know something on that, point me to the right file or config!
I downloaded Launcher2.apk, extracted it, and gone through each single file inside. And "Drawer Layout" or "Drawer Background" aren't there. What could I do next?
Looking at the Launcher2 source, it is a xml file in the drawables folder named wallpaper_gallery_background.xml.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
wallpaper_gallery_background.xml - it was one of my search result for "backgound" keyword. But I went over it, since I think is related to the wallpaper picker (the little gallery of wallpapers at the bottom of the wallpaper selection screen...). Any other ideas?
p.s.: Happy that finally someone is paying attention to this topic... xda doesn't help people with a few posts or subscribed only some months ago (and that doesn't implies that they're newbie or dumb è_é) in ANY WAY... ;D I think this would be a very appreciated feature, this thread has a lot of views in just 1 day and a half!
I will play around with the source and get back with you.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
Only thing I could find in Launcher2 is in drawable-xhdpi. The first PNG is apps_customize_bg.png and its a black image. Didn't see any XML files related to app drawer, which leads me to think its all hidden in smali code or another apk.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA App
@AndHel Great! That's the answer I was waiting for! Thank you so much...I hope we'll be able to find something relatively easy to handle ;D
BTW, it would be very interesting knowing a bit more about Android decompiling and modding...if you want, explain me (even very quickly) how will you reach certain files/configurations, if you'll do, when you'll do.
@mb02 Thank you for your efforts too, I hope you're wrong but I fear you're right...absolutely not even a single word that remembers the "app drawer"! Maybe with your patience, we'll find out more!
...and I keep searching around /system for any kind of thing graphic-related to this damned drawer ;P
ledoweb said:
@AndHel Great! That's the answer I was waiting for! Thank you so much...I hope we'll be able to find something relatively easy to handle ;D
BTW, it would be very interesting knowing a bit more about Android decompiling and modding...if you want, explain me (even very quickly) how will you reach certain files/configurations, if you'll do, when you'll do.
@mb02 Thank you for your efforts too, I hope you're wrong but I fear you're right...absolutely not even a single word that remembers the "app drawer"! Maybe with your patience, we'll find out more!
...and I keep searching around /system for any kind of thing graphic-related to this damned drawer ;P
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Click to collapse
In every iteration of Android prior, including skinned versions (Sense, TW, blur) the app drawer coding and images resided in the launcher (Rosie, Launcher, etc). The naming, however, wasn't ever "app drawer" but "all apps" as drawer was never he official term for the all apps view. Rosie launcher had multiple XML files in the Rosie.apk res/layout folder that dealt with this "all apps" as well as related images. With the absence of anything related to apps in this Launcher2.apk, I feel as though everything was moved to smali or in another apk, unless they cleverly hid it in another XML in Launcher2.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA App
It's within /res/layout in Launcher2. The file is called apps_customize_pane.xml
Just change the 2 values ff000000 into something else, i.e. bb000000 to make them slightly transparent.
It sounds promising...i thought that file was for a screen called "apps customization"
...may I ask which other letters could I use to increase/decrease opacity? AFAIK, numbers are for color and letters are for alpha...right?
Anyway, thanks so much for this solution! - I'll give it a try as far as I can. BTW, no way to replace a colour with something better, like a .png? Maybe just removing that string, and replacing it with something slightly different...
Edit: I'm having troubles in editing that .xml. Apktool fails decompiling Launcer2.apk probably because I'm using an old version of the android SDK, and this means...that I'm stuck at unreadable .xmls. I'm waiting for the SDK manager to have all updates installed, and then I might be able to finally "undress" this damned drawer ;P
This is likely harder than you expect. A few technical notes (and yes it's possible this will be a Nova feature in the future but it's not officially planned at this time).
1) App drawer is indeed called "AppsCustomizePagedView"
2) When viewing the app drawer, the launcher disables the wallpaper from showing (I believe as an optimization). I think if you made the drawer fully transparent you would see (in order from top to bottom):
Drawer
Smaller sized home screens
Black background
If you're editing source you can prevent the black background by changing updateWallpaperVisibility(). To hide the home screens you'd probably have to change the animation code in showAppsCustomizeHelper which could be a bit tricky.
[email protected] said:
This is likely harder than you expect. A few technical notes (and yes it's possible this will be a Nova feature in the future but it's not officially planned at this time).
1) App drawer is indeed called "AppsCustomizePagedView"
2) When viewing the app drawer, the launcher disables the wallpaper from showing (I believe as an optimization). I think if you made the drawer fully transparent you would see (in order from top to bottom):
Drawer
Smaller sized home screens
Black background
If you're editing source you can prevent the black background by changing updateWallpaperVisibility(). To hide the home screens you'd probably have to change the animation code in showAppsCustomizeHelper which could be a bit tricky.
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i managed to get the app drawer transparent and indeed a black background..
but cant find updatewallpapervisibility anywhere
where can it be found? is it a xml or in a xml ?
thnx!
For that you have to edit source files and recompile, it's not just an XML edit.
Sent from The Past into The Future via The Present.
Milamber33 said:
For that you have to edit source files and recompile, it's not just an XML edit.
Sent from The Past into The Future via The Present.
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Click to collapse
ok!thnx!
i found the trebuchet source on gethub
i managed to change the source so the black screen and all is gone and the drawer is transparent.. but i cant test it because i dont know how to compile it
can you tell me ? thnx
There are plenty of tutorials on setting up an Android build environment and compiling the source floating around. They will be far more detailed and useful than I could be.
Sent from The Past into The Future via The Present.
I did it
I made it transparent its on a thread i started
locomain said:
I did it
I made it transparent its on a thread i started
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Where is the thread?
Im gonna play around with this a bit when I have the chance....
But, using APKtool to decompile or recompile is very similar....
If you already have apktool all setup with your Roms framework file, and you already decompiled the file...... to recompile, all you have to do is use the command "apktool b foldername"
where folder name is the folder that it decompiled the apk to (likely Launcher2)
I've spent the last few hours trying to recreate something I accomplished in the past with nothing more than what is on my phone and I can't figure it out. I am running and have been running Calk's ROM and outside of Astro File Manager I don't believe I've added anything to my phone to do this. The attached picture shows a shortcut in the standard TWLauncer for a Citrix ICA file. I created this and remember the option for me to select an Icon and I remember choosing the one that is shown. Several people have asked me how I did it and I'd like to create others, but can't seem to figure how I did it. It really shouldn't be that difficult. I can easilly create an Astro Shortcut that I can name anything I want and it works, but I'm not able to edit the icon. If I switch to another Launcher I can hold-click on the icon and edit it to be something else, but in the default launcher as shown I'm not able to figure this out. Can anyone surmise what I did? It is possible that in a version of Astro or a version of Calk's ROM this option was there and now it's not, but outside of that I'm either missing something or just being clueless (not at all unusuall).
Bump - anyone have any thoughts?
As a previous iPhone user the one thing I can say I miss is the ease of using the ssh feature after jail breaking and having access to the system files If I wanted to change lets say the "camera icon"- I could ssh into the phone and go into the system file folder and find that one file name, remove it and replace it with the new icon jpeg. That's it! End the ssh session and BAM! I have a new icon for my camera.
Or if i wanted to change the dial pad background on my phone or the way the keys light up on my old iPhone I would just ssh and go to the "phone" jpeg file and just change it out. and BAM I have a new phone skin.
I'm sure you get my point....
So now that I'm using Android I love how the options are there to change. However I'm OCD and don't like to download all these files and icon packs which takes up storage on my S3. So I have installed sshDroid and using Filezilla successfully accessed my phone. ( Yes I'm rooted)
Now I downloaded a few icon packs but I don't want to keep the download on my phone. What I want to do is choose a few icons I like, ssh into my phone and replace lets say the "google+" icon with a new one.
The question is where in the world is the file? How do I access the stock system icons?
This is where Android is awesome to customize but hard as crap to find files.
Can someone provide me with instructions, or a link to instructions on how to do this?
I've been on Google and I'm not really finding the answer to my question. I just simply want to change my icons so I can make my own theme.
Please help! Thanks
You have to use an icon pack in a launcher or decompile the app you want to change the icon for and then swap the icon out and then rebuild the apk and install.
Your better off with an icon pack. As there is no easy way. Android was made for developers mainly.
Wayne Tech S-III
So, my old phone's screen died. As it happens, I still have access to it via a HDMI out, but I just wanted to migrate all the Nova stuff straight across to my new phone.
But I've customised Everything.
The backup-restore process tried to bring across as much as possible, but I'm beginning to think that, for my level of customisation, maybe I should see if I can edit the backup file by hand before I restore it (hear me out).
My problems with restore:
1. Nova Prime. The first app link the restore should launch is to prompt the user to reinstall Prime. Took me a while to realise why a bunch of things weren't working the way I used to enjoy.
2. Wallpaper. You could argue this is not a launcher setting, but even if it was an option to dump the image into the backup file (is it an archive?), it would make migration smoother. Not a biggie though, and the o/s should let you sort it yourself, providing you can locate the original image of course.
2. Apps not present. So you just restored the Nova backup to a new phone and a bunch of icons don't work. But wait: the ghost-icon launches straight to an app store search for them - excellent! Love this. Except for those 5% of apps that you hunted down APKs and side-loaded. Okay, this issue is a bit niche and probably belongs in a backup app that saves APKs rather than Nova. Fair enough. If new-Nova could talk to old-Nova, it'd be a cool migration feature though.
3. Icon pack stuff. I've replaced all my icons using an icon pack + no labels. Searching icon packs and selecting the perfect icon takes time, so I appreciate that the restored ghost icons "just work" once the matching app is installed. A bunch of icons didn't appear though: I think these were widget-like shortcuts, maybe? E.g. my new device's 'phone' app wasn't recognised as the same one as my old one, so all those contact shortcuts had to be remade (cue icon pack searching again). Using Nate Wren's "The Grid" (presuming I shouldn't just dump the Play URL here; search for it if you're interested), there are so many icons but no reliable way to find an exact icon (is there a hidden icon title name I can search for somehow?). Reinstating icons would be easier if custom icons could be more identifiable somehow. Could I read the backup file and/or tune it by hand, perhaps?
Might write a few more items later. Cheers for any ideas or explanations that might help.