[Droid X Themes and Apps] Corey@rabbit:
Ok, this is a how to customize your own themes for dummies/n00bs. This is for all the people that might love a certain them, but may want a particular image for something that’s only in another theme. This is what I was doing for all my stuff. Since there are so many new people brought to the dark side because of the X I think this was in order.

*******must have ROOT, must have a TERMINAL EMULATOR app*****

Im sure there are more how-to’s like this out there but currently there isn’t one in the X section.

First thing you will need is the program 7-zip. Quick google search will get it for you.

Second thing you need to do is to know where what image you want to change is stored on the phone. Most themes change usually 2 files. Settings.apk, Framework.apk, other changes will be app specific. Say a gloss black music widget will be part of the Music.apk file.

Mjones made a complete system dump of /system/app from the droid X Get it, it will come in handy

http://www.droidxforums.com/forum/d...hose-who-deleted-apps-without-backing-up.html

Download it and make a copy of it, put one in a safe place, and never edit one of the files.

Now lets do one simple one Music.apk

Find it in the second system dump file, and with 7zip installed, right click music.apk and hover the mouse over 7zip, in the new option window choose extract to music.apk. You now have a folder of everything in the apk. 99% of the time the images you will be editing will be in the res folder, and one of the sub folders with hdpi in the name. In the case open drawable-hdpi-finger. Here you will see lots of images.

Next thing you need to know is what images you want to change, Now if you have photoshop skillz you can have a field day here :P But for the unlucky few like me, you will have to find the image you want elsewhere.

Lets use my music.apk http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=7529911#post7529911 download my music.apk . Follow the same steps to open it and browse to the same location. Right now I suggest having both the stock apk and the one your kanging images from open, each one taking up half the screen. Helps keep things neat and tidy. Lets say for now you have my folder on the right and the stock music.apk on the left, and your in the right folder.

Lets say all you want is a glossy black app widget. Widget images typically start with appwidget****. You can see this in the 4th image over. Compare the 2 and verify the one you want. !!!! make sure that the name matches exactly as well as the pixels!!! That is very important when pulling images from themes for other devices, actually even same devices may have different names down the line when we have custom roms.

*** for only doing very few images, <10, I will typically copy the these images to a separate folder. So right now make a folder called temp on your desktop. Were only going to copy the ‘appwidget_bg.9’ file. Copy this folder to your temp folder you just made. Close the other 2 music windows and just keep you temp window open. Now find your intact music.apk, NOT YOUR MAIN BACK UP BUT YOUR COPY!!, right click, choose 7zip, choose open archive. In this window navigate to where the image is that your replacing. In this case, res/drawable-hdpi-finger, you will need both the archive window and your temp folder open and side by side, select all the images in the temp folder you are replacing and drag and drop into the 7zip archive, confirm you want to do this, then close the archive, save if prompted. You now have your own custom apk.

***** when im doing a major over haul or mas up, I will have the main file I want on the left, Say so and so’s metal theme, and the other theme im grabbing better images from on the right, I will drag the images I want from the right and drop them into the one on the left, I will do this for as many images im changing. Again the who time verifying names and sizes. Extra files or incorrect sizes could screw up your phone after install. Once I have my customized metal theme, I keep this on open and open a 7zip archive of the untouched apk to the right. Since I now don’t remember which files were changes I will select all files in the folder of the metal them im changing and drag them to the proper folder of the original metal theme. Now I have the base metal them with images I prefer over the originals.

Now that we have our modified music.apk, throw it on the root of your sd card. At the time I wrote this we are pushing all files to the proper directory. Im sure update.zips will come, but for now I wont worry about it.

!!!!! Important, at no time should you edit the name of the apk, it needs to match the original exactly!!!!

On your phone open Terminal emulator

We need to mount the system so we can write to it,

So type

Su <hit enter>

Gives a # sign

Type

mount -o rw,remount -t ext3 /dev/block/mmcblk1p21 /system <hit enter>

now we need to copy (cp) the source file(/sdcard/Music.apk) to the source destination(/system/app)

cp /sdcard/Music.apk /system/app<hit enter>

Make sure it is spelt right! In this case the M needs to be capitol not m

Also there is a space after cp and a space after the k

No we need to remount the system

mount -o ro,remount -t ext3 /dev/block/mmcblk1p21 /system<hit enter>

notice its now ro not rw

type exit<hit enter>

close out of the app

If you had a music widget on you phone before if might now say cannot load.

Drag it to the trash and reapply

!hurray! you can now mod your own themes.

Start slow, small files here and there.

Don’t ever publish files that have other peoples images without first asking permission to use their image and giving credit.

I hope people add their 2 cents for better guidance to this post.

Special thanks to tparker76