iPhone Theme-ing experts need guidance (consolidating many themes into one)

[sassenach74]

Hi guys/gals,

I'm hoping some of you are clever enough (more clever than me anyway) to be able to help me in achieving the goal of consolidating many themes into one theme.

Basically I have two main themes installed on my phone: ayecon and andro hd (thanks schnedi). I also have a few tweaks such as no lock bars, a rainbow dock theme (again, thanks schnedi) and a sb widget (d0ink).
The ayecon theme is divided into many smaller themes: lockscreen, user interface, springboard, status bar, backboard, messages, phone, iPod, while Andro is divided into 2 themes: icons and user interface.

Now I hope this isn't disrespectful to the creators, but I'd like to take parts of themes that I like and make one theme and name it 'My Theme' or similar.
This will have a few desired effects, firstly it will make my winterboard list very simple, instead of a long winded list, secondly, if a theme is updated, any messing with files, changes etc wont be overwritten by the update.

I've had a go at doing this myself, and have gotten into a file/folder pickle, not knowing what's going to overwrite what, what structure it needs to work etc etc. I've tried googling for an answer but come up short.

Ive done jailbreaking in the past but I'm new to theming of iOS, I only ever installed tweaks before, but I'm getting into the whole theming thing. Any and all help is much appreciated and if I can repay the help back to the forums in any way ill be sure to do just that.

Thanks in advance (fingers crossed),

Neil.

 

[Munkypoo7]

In a nutshell, there's nothing wrong (to my knowledge) to mix themes and make your own as long as it's for personal use and you never release it as your own work (unless I guess if you have the explicit permission from the original artists.. which I doubt they'd allow )

Anyways, it's basically mixing folders and picking which images (theme components) you prefer.

The best way is to realized which components you like of each.. then find them in their folders.

For example:
If you like the status bar stuff like signal bars, you would look in the "Theme/UIImages" area.

UIImages refers to Interface goodies that are used generally throughout the OS.

Within the "Theme/Bundles" folder you'll have sub folders like "com.apple.AppStore". These are somewhat self explanatory. This one in particular refers to the AppStore app and what images / components will be themed.

Other apps will have other subfolders like iFile would be: "eu.heinelt.ifile". Bear in mind, that if you want to change the app icons, the newer icons must be placed in their respective Bundles folder, not within the UIImages folder.

I'm not terribly well versed in theme-ing, usually I just tweak other themes into one that fits me perfectly. Just hope this helps just a wee bit

 

[sassenach74]

Yep it's defo a help. The issue I'm mostly running into is there seems to be a lot of repetition of the same folder name, especially com.apple.springboard. Can I chuck everything I want from different themes that have that folder, all into one. I'm finding it hard to explain what I mean exactly. I guess I need to know what the file structure of my theme would have to be, in as few folders as possible if i can, just to make life easier for myself when swapping out content and such.

Many thanks for replying.

Neil.

 

[Dwalls90]

Winterboard will apply, hierarchically, your themes, based on the order in winterboard.

This may help so that you don't have to re-organized folders in some cases.

 

[Munkypoo7]

Yep it's defo a help. The issue I'm mostly running into is there seems to be a lot of repetition of the same folder name, especially com.apple.springboard. Can I chuck everything I want from different themes that have that folder, all into one. I'm finding it hard to explain what I mean exactly. I guess I need to know what the file structure of my theme would have to be, in as few folders as possible if i can, just to make life easier for myself when swapping out content and such.

Many thanks for replying.

Neil.

That's because that's the designated folder that Winterboard utilizes to make modifications to your... well.. springboard.

If you take both springboard folders (one per theme for example), you'll notice many file names are the same, and those files are similar elements, like sliders, or backgrounds etc. Well you mix and match, override those you don't like then give it a whirl. Basically, you can smash them together, just be aware of what overrides what. What you like most should be what's left.

I'm quite terrible at explaining things, I'm so sorry :\

 

[sassenach74]

Winterboard will apply, hierarchically, your themes, based on the order in winterboard.

This may help so that you don't have to re-organized folders in some cases.

Hey Dwalls, it took me a while last week or so to realise that, but yeah, I knew hierarchy mattered in winterboard. I'm hoping if I can consolidate my themes then I won't have to worry about that anyway, as ill only have one theme listed, my consolidated theme.

Thanks for replying, appreciate it.

Neil.

Edit: Woo look, I've just been upgraded to 65816, 1,000 (probably useless) posts made

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That's because that's the designated folder that Winterboard utilizes to make modifications to your... well.. springboard.

If you take both springboard folders (one per theme for example), you'll notice many file names are the same, and those files are similar elements, like sliders, or backgrounds etc. Well you mix and match, override those you don't like then give it a whirl. Basically, you can smash them together, just be aware of what overrides what. What you like most should be what's left.

I'm quite terrible at explaining things, I'm so sorry :\

No, no, you're explaining yourself perfectly well, thank you.

Here's an example of what I mean:

In my themes folder I have 'ayecon statusbar.theme' inside there is a folder called bundles, and inside that is a folder called.....you guess it......com.apple.springboard. Inside that is a bunch of files, obviously relating to the status bar.
Now, I also have a folder called 'andro hd icons', inside that is a folder called com.apple.springboard, with a bunch of files inside, these are different, obviously, to the other mentioned folder, these are dock images n stuff.

The question is, can the contents of both com.apple.springboard folders reside in the same folder, even though one is for status bar stuff, the other for dock stuff?

I'm probably the worst person at explaining myself, so I hope someone can unravel my garble.

Neil.

 

[ahhboi]

For me, I will activate my fav theme at the bottom of winterboard which will act as a base theme.

Thereafter, I will make serveral small themes that changes some of the icons, uiimages, status bar, badges, plist, lockscreen, springboard screen etc and activate them above my fav theme.
Advantage is that I can change them as and when I liked.

Much easy than to mix both themes together and make one permanently

 

[sassenach74]

For me, I will activate my fav theme at the bottom of winterboard which will act as a base theme.

Thereafter, I will make serveral small themes that changes some of the icons, uiimages, status bar, badges, plist, lockscreen, springboard screen etc and activate them above my fav theme.
Advantage is that I can change them as and when I liked.

Much easy than to mix both themes together and make one permanently

Ah, I see, that makes sense. I was just trying to get my head around the logistics of making changes to my theme if I was to have it all together. Like if I decided I made a change for the worst, going back wouldn't be simple. Maybe your idea is better. I'll have to get my head around how to go about it though. So confusing this theming lark. Thanks for replying ahhboi.

 

[ahhboi]

Ah, I see, that makes sense. I was just trying to get my head around the logistics of making changes to my theme if I was to have it all together. Like if I decided I made a change for the worst, going back wouldn't be simple. Maybe your idea is better. I'll have to get my head around how to go about it though. So confusing this theming lark. Thanks for replying ahhboi.

It might be time consuming and confusing the first time, but after some time, u will get to know the file names of the images that you like And you are able to grab bits and pieces from here or Modmyi and make many "small themes"

Plus, they can be use over and over, example most of my small themes i had used it on my ip4 to my ip4s and now on my ip5. Adding only a few as and when I find something nice on these threads.