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Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Customizing / Creating Themes for iPhone / iPod Touch.

Okay, so I just spent the last two days tinkering with my phone and doing some research on how I can customize and create my own themes, and tonight, I'm gonna share with you guys all I've learned so far.

First of all, I have an iPhone 3G, running on version 4.0.1, jailbroken. If you want to be able to do what I'll list below, you need to have your device jailbroken, or else it won't work. I'm not really sure if this will work on iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4, but you can try!
You can take your device to a technician to have it jailbroken (recommended!) or jailbreak it yourself. You can search the internet for the software you need to do it.

So, once your device is jailbroken, you'll have this app called Cydia. It's like the app store, but most of the stuff there is free, I think. So you'll need wifi or internet connection on your phone. Once you're done, follow these steps.

1. Click on Cydia.



2. On the search bar, type WinterBoard.



3. Install WinterBoard. It will automatically reboot your device after the installation.

Once you have WinterBoard, you're now free to download free themes, or better yet, create your own!

Downloading free pre-made themes: (WiFi is still needed here)

1. Open Cydia.
2. Click Sections.



3. Select Themes (Springboard).
4. Browse and select the theme you want, then click Install on the upper right corner, and then confirm.
5. Wait for the theme to finish downloading, then you can leave Cydia. Or you can download more themes!

Setting your theme. Or, as I like to call it, the fun part!

1. Open WinterBoard. It should be found on your screen with all the other apps, or you can go to Settings. It's right below the list of settings you can change on your phone.




 2. Turn Summerboard mode on.



3.Click Select Themes.



4. On the list, select the theme you want to use. If you check two themes at once, the one on the higher tab gets used. or example, on the picture below, the theme Ashley Greene gets used because it is placed higher than Hello Kitty. To rearrange your themes, drag them up and down by holding the gray lines on their right.



5. After selecting your theme of choice, click Winterboard on the upper left corner.



6. Click Respring. It's also on the upper left corner.



7. Your phone will go back to the locked screen or a black screen with the "loading" icon on it. That's normal. Wait for it to end, then voila! You now have your theme installed.



Creating your own iPhone theme:

For this, you'll need an iPhone browser. I downloaded mine for free here.

Once you have it installed on your computer, follow these steps:

1. Connect your device to your computer.
2. Open the iPhone browser.



3. Once opened, the iPhone browser should indicate that your device is connected and jailbroken.


4. Click Go to location and WinterBoard themes. It should load the location of the themes on your device.



5. Minimize the browser and go to desktop. Create a new folder, then name it whatever you want to name your theme.






6. Inside that folder, create two new folders. Name them Bundles and Icons. Then, pick 3 images of your choice. They should be 320 x 480 in size. Put them inside the theme folder, with Bundles and Icons.

IMPORTANT: All images should be in PNG format and everything should be named accordingly, or the theme won't work.

If the steps above were followed correctly, your folder should now look like this.


LockBackground is the image in the lock screen when your device is locked. You can decide not to have one, it's your choice.

SMSBackground is the image you see in the background when you read text messages. You can decide not to have one, it's your choice.


Wallpaper is the image you see on your home screen. You can decide not to have one, it's your choice.

7.The Bundles folder is optional. If you decide not to change the items included here, you can just skip off this step and not create a Bundles folder.

Inside the bundles folder, create two folders. 8Name them com.apple.MobileSMS and com.apple.TelephonyUI




8. Open com.apple.MobileSMS and paste two images of text balloons of your choice, any size. Again, this is optional, so you can skip it off. They must be in PNG format. Name them Balloon_1 and Balloon_2.



 9. Leave com.apple.MobileSMS and open com.apple.TelephonyUI. Here, you can customize the image on your slide bar when unlocking your phone. This, too, is optional. So you can just skip it off if you want to leave the slide bar image as it is. Put in this folder the image you want to replace the arrow on your slide bar. It must be on PNG format, 60x60 in size, and name it bottombarknobgray.


10. Now that you're done with the items i the Bundles folder, you can leave it and open the Icons folder.


11. For the Icons, you'll need 22pieces of 60x60 images or icons in PNG format. You can also just choose the icons you want to change if you don't feel like setting up that many. Icons are available here for free or you can use your own images. Anything you want, really, as long as they're PNG and 60x60.

Here is the list of all the icons you can change, and what the images should be named.


Apple App Store - App Store
Calculator - Calculator
Calendar - Calendar
Camera - Camera
Clock - Clock
Contacts - Contacts
Cydia - Cydia
Installous - Installous
Mail - Mail
Maps - Maps
Messages - Messages
Notes - Notes
Phone - Phone
Photos - Photos
Safari - Safari
Settings - Settings
Stocks - Stocks
Weather - Weather
WinterBoard - WinterBoard
YouTube - YouTube
iPod - iPod
iTunes - iTunes

 So basically, you don't have to change the names except for the App Store. Take not of the capitalization, I'm not sure if it will work with incorrect caps.  Anyway, here's what the Icons folder should look like once you're done pasting your images.


As you can see, I didn't put in all the icons I've mentioned above cause I'm just giving an example, haha. But you can just choose what you want to change too, that's the good thing about it. You can have your theme any way you want to.


12. We're done with all the stuff that need customizing, so now you ca minimize all folders and go to desktop, open the iphone browser, and drag your theme folder to the "Themes" section of your iPhone.



Note that the "Theme" on the left is clicked blue, so I could be sure that I'm dragging the theme into the correct folder. After your theme's name appears under the "Themes" in the browser, click on it. This is what it should look like.




All the files should have a ".png" extension. When you've got this all right, you can disconnect your device from the computer and go to WinterBoard to change your theme. You can reboot first if you want, to make sure that all changes have been made.

Yay! You just made your own theme, isn't that incredible?! i know it's a lot of work, but once you get the hang, it gets easier! Patience is the key. After all, the reward that's waiting for you is something not everyone can do or have! So good luck, and feel free to ask me questions if there are any. Or comments and suggestions, right there on the comments section! Happy theme making!

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