[T-Mobile, Samsung Galaxy SIII] vhfw:
Hi there guys!

I am a new account/poster, so I apologize if this is the wrong place for this question. I read the sticky, so I would think I'm good, but feel free to enlighten me :D

Long story short, I'm working on making a VERY simplified custom ROM for the SGH-T999 (TMobile's Galaxy S III). This is a project for school, so the idea was to make it simple for average users: remove certain settings, remove bloatware apps, customize icons etc. For this project, I only wanted to focus on one thing to see if I could do it. That was to remove the GPS quick toggle from the notification panel and remove the "Location settings" option from Settings. Again, this was just a simple test for school, so I'm aware this doesn't completely remove GPS ;)

I have built my ROM off of TMobile's 4.3 stock ROM using the oh-so-time-and-noob saving Android Kitchen and APK Multi Tool, both most up to date version. After reading and testing the wonderful tutorials on XDA about Systemui and Secsettings apk modification, I am having trouble removing the GPS quick toggle. It seems that with this version of Touchwiz, or Jellybean, or TMobile stock, it has become MUCH harder to edit the toggles/notification xml without editing all of them at once. The tutorials for modding this area are at least a year old, and I know that the current stock version of Touchwiz has implemented customizable toggles anyway. My goal was to remove the GPS toggle completely so the user could not have access to it to customize.

I've seriously been reading everything I can on this stuff, so I don't think I missed a post about this specific problem on the Galaxy SIII. I have been testing and re-testing for about three days now, with no results at all. Literally. My XML edits do not seem to have any effect (arrays.xml for arrangement for example). I was able to successfully remove the Location settings option, so I know my edits work in certain places. I've seen tons of people talking, but I just wanted to clarify that I'm not missing something about the way this is coded. I've been trying to trace the code path, and it seems to lead to dreaded hex IDs and Smali. Which if I have to get that deep, I'm pretty confident my professor would just tell me to forget it and mod other things.

I know people have made some pretty sweet mods for this that I could just deploy, but I want to learn to do it myself. I am a programmer after all :) I have a lot of experience with XML and JavaScript, just not Smali. I would really like to know if anyone else has noticed this change in toggle modification, or if I'm completely missing the ball. If any of you guys know where I might continue my search, it would be appreciated. I don't want to just make a transparent .png to replace the icon, because then it's still clickable ;) Another workaround option I just thought of could be to set the default toggles. (Only want Wi-Fi and Drive-Mode when the ROM deploys for example). Even then, I don't know where to set those, and actually have my edits apply.

Guess this turned into a long story heh, but I wanted to give as much info as possible. Thanks again guys! Long time reader, first time poster. If I learn this stuff I'd love to help others using what I've learned. Peace!