Editing the look inside an app? - Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

I'm running hyperdrive RLS 19 (which more than likely doesn't matter)... I was wondering how to edit the look of an app.. When I say that I don't necessarily mean the icon or the the title. I actually mean like the look inside the app. I am fairly new to android development. I'm a noob of sorts. I came from using ios . in iOS you can literally locate the image files in the file manager and pull them directly from you phone and edit them. Can you do that on android. For instance if I wanted to change the look inside my messaging app. Let's say I wanted to change the background color, and also the font color only inside that app to red and I also wanted to change the way the listed conversations that appear, look (the way the boxes their separated into look). This forum is specifically for the galaxy s4 so assuming you have one. Just look at your default messaging app and look how the messages are separated into rectangles by conversation if you are unclear of what I mean by the rectangle thing. Sorry for such a long post. How can I make this happen.

Related

[Q] Questions about better camera, system colors etc.

Hello there, noob here
I'm getting confused with all the info about the SGII out there, so I wonder:
1) I've got the Lightning ROM installed and it says there in the desc "better camera", is this a different hack from the one Potatoman released here? And if it is, can I savely install the 192kbps audio hack with that ROM and do I lose the camera improvements that came with that ROM?
2) Is there a way to invert the system colours easily, like have dark text on white background instead of the bright text on black background thingy?
I mean not just for themes (e.g. homescreens etc) but for the system menus etc, so it'll have a coherent, seemless look? I did stumble upon the "Change colours" tutorial here but it seems rather tricky and I'm scared to fiddle with the system files on my own :/
Or is there -perhaps- some ROM out there that includes such already?
Don't get me wrong, I don't think the white text on black bg is bad per se but I find it easier on the eyes if it's the other way round (like it's on the iPhone *cough*)
Cheers!

Theme "Manage Applications"

What is this app called? I can't find it. I got settings.apk inverted but when I click on manage applications, its not inverted so it must be a different app.
no one knows? Im going to have to start decompiling apps 1 by 1 til i find it? lol
I Doubt Anyone Can Help With A Vague Question. I See Manage Applications, Theme, And Inverted. Can You Give More Information About What Your Seeking?
I am using the Droid X2 running Eclipse 2.2. I have themed the settings.apk file. All is well except when I click on "Manage Applications" from inside settings. This tells me that Manage Applications is a separate app than settings. It just shows up in the settings menu. Much like Angry Birds would show up in the App Drawer even though its not part of appdrawer.apk.. or whatever its called.
I am trying to find the file in system/app that controls "Manage Applications".
That there is about as specific as I can get.
Xkape, where did your inverted theme go? Since our recovery requires ac power I didnt want to chance an outage with Irene doing her thing.
I love dark themes and the inverted theme looked awesome. Hopefully you pulled it to tweak something, unless I am completely blind and I'm just missing it.
jeremy, i never posted it here. I did at Droidforums and at rootzwiki. But, now I am updating it to 0.4 since that came out today. Eclipse I mean.
I will post it here but I am waiting on something that hasn't happened yet. When it does, I'll post it.
I know what you want!!! I know what you want!!!!! You want to theme the application manager from the settings menu!!!! Settings>>Applications>>Manage Applications right???!!!
you are RIGHT my friend!!! I see the xmls in the settings.apk but I dont see where there is anything to edit. I assumed it was another app but now I just think I am overlooking something.
Unfortunately I just figured out what you are talking about but know way too little about how to do what you want.... Sorry...
Bump...anyone figure this out yet? Im trying to change text colors in manage applications on eclipse .2.2 because its white text on white BG
Yeah I got it figured out. I didn't see the code in the xmls so.. I just made my own. Works fine. you need to add android:textColor="#ff000000" if you want the text black. Stick any code you want in there though.
What xml's did you use to change the text color for the app name? I have look over manage_applications and manage_applications_item and found nothing. In manage_applications you can change the text color from black to white but that is only for Application Storage and Internal Storage located at the bottom. In the running section everything turn out perfect but not in the downloaded, all and media area have black text.

[Q] framework-res.apk & dianxinos-res.apk

Hey there everyone, I am wanting to edit my framework to get a better looking notification bar. I have an android phone called SH7218U, I am rooted with all Gapps.
If you look this up phone on Google, you will see that the notification bar and icons are very similar to stock Android 2.2 ( I am running 2.2.1). The only difference is that the signal bar is located to the left of the bar as well as some icons getting set there as well. You can really see this here: http://www.itechnews.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Sharp-SH7218U-Clamshell-Android-Phone.jpg
When going into root explorer and checking out system/framework I am see the familiar framework-res.apk file, but I also see an apk file called dianxinos-res.apk. It seesm to be able to mess with framework and change the UI and other things, both of these files need to be edited. This is just a guess though since I have been able to find a post on a Chinese forum that gives a new notification bar (the only difference being the battery icon replaced with a numerical battery representation and the (when bar is pulled down) shortcut to the useless built-in task killer is gone. Inside of the package to this new framework I get both framework and dianxinos files so it seems I would have to replace both of the old files with the new ones.
As you can see in the above image there are virtual android buttons on the bottom of the screen as well, for when you want to use the phone normally. I do not think that the dianxinos-res.apk is linked to the virtual buttons as exploring system/media/pics contain.bmp images of the virtual buttons and I have confirmation by another SH7218U user that editing these images will directly effect how they are displayed.
I was just wondering anyone know how to edit the framework when there are two files corresponding to this. I don't know much about editing the framework but even so I am quick to learn but figured I would just ask around before I do anything. Worst comes to worst, like a bootloop for instance, I have a system.img for my phone so flashing that with fastboot will get my phone working again.
Anyway, Ive uploaded both files in case anyone would like to look at them. I am trying to go for a gingerbread-esque notification bar with blue instead of green possibly.
If anyone thinks this thread would get better hits elsewhere I would appreciate any input.

[Q] How to remove Emoticons

Hello,
I'm wanting to remove those annoying little green emoticons from my phone. I DON'T want to use a different app. I just want
Code:
:)
to remain a
Code:
:)
. I've located them in /system/framework/framework-res.apk.
Phone: Droid X2
ROM: CM9 Alpha 5
Any ideas?
Use GoSMS? They have different emoticons.
This is just a theory based on my knowledge of how stuff works. When you type in the text smiley face, it tells the phone to replace it with an image. Somewhere on the phone in some file is probably some code that has the path to the image. If its anything like a web page, removing the image but keeping the path may result in something unwanted when typing the text smiley face. Unless there is a code somewhere that tells it to default to text when the image is not found. Bottom line is, if you know how to edit the framework-res.apk, you can try to either delete the images and see if it works, or the next best thing you can do is replace the images with another set of emoticons you can live with.
I may have looked to far into that. lol.
Just make sure to backup your ROM before making any changes.

[Q]How to identify drawable name/id on running app?

Hi! I'm new into creating themes, and I'm looking for a tool that could make it easier. I know how to extract .apk, how to replace images, modify .xmls, but often I don't know what an image is for. Let's say im modding SystemUI and I want to change background of my notification bar. The only thing I know is that inside drawables folder I have to look for something named notification_bar.png, something like that. I was looking for an app that could tell me how an image inside an app is called in code ( example: I'm inside calculator app, I press on background and the app says that file is called background.png and is inside drawables-xxhdpi). I tried Android Studio --> Layout Inspector, but it didn't help me at all because, well, I just don't understand it.
Of course, while modifying SystemUI I can look for explaination of certain pngs on the internet, but
-not every SystemUI is the same
- if I want to change drawables of an app that doesn't have specific explaination I have to know how to identify drawables.
It must be possible somehow, because I've run into some themes that modify external apps (like WhatsApp, SuperSU etc.)
Those ppl had to know what certain .png is for, the question is: How?
I don't believe they just had to sit there and try every possible combination.
Also, inside SystemUI there's A LOT of files that are never used, and their names can be misleading.
Is there any way to identify drawable inside running app easily? Without digging in code and guessing?
Thanks in advance for any answer
I tried to analyze Mms.apk (it's system app). I was looking for a drawable representing default contact icon, here called ic_contact_picture.png .
I actually managed to find a proper layer in Layout Inspector(ConversationListItem.xml), analyzed it and found a code referring to table "id" in resources.arsc . The object the id referred to was called "avatar". And that's it. I couldn't find id(I got it from resources.arsc/drawables) of ic_contact_picture.png anywhere in that layout. There was only id referring to "id/avatar". It doesn't make any sense.
How do I find drawables using Layout Inspector or any other tool?
It was easier when it came to text. I also found an id referring to resources.arsc/id, but that id was included in the layer I was looking at (ConversationListItem.xml).
But I still wasn't able to perform any action on that text, because there wasn't any setting like text color or anything, there was just a line android:textAppearance="@attr/0x1010041"
It is an attrib from framework-res.apk, but when I opened framework-res.apk and found that attrib there was no reference to anything like color, font, so there was nothing I could really do.
Can someone help me with those 2 problems?

Categories

Resources