So i've been looking to theme my X and someone told me to use Rom Manager for themeing because it's easy. But if all i did was a basic root and i didn't change bootloader or i'm not deoxed or whatever else you can possibly do to this phone will this mess my phone up? Or is it fine to use to theme my phone with just a basic root?
quic said:
So i've been looking to theme my X and someone told me to use Rom Manager for themeing because it's easy. But if all i did was a basic root and i didn't change bootloader or i'm not deoxed or whatever else you can possibly do to this phone will this mess my phone up? Or is it fine to use to theme my phone with just a basic root?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Rom Manager will need the Bootloader in order to do the installs. Rom Manager basically boots into recovery and installs the .zip file you downloaded.
If you don't Deodex your phone and install a theme, I do not think it will 'break', but your theme is likely to be half-a$$ed. Themes replace images (which should still work even if not de-odex) and they edit certain parts of other files (services.jar for example) to change the colors of some text. If your phone is Odexed, the coding for those colors will not be in the right place and thus won't change.
Zaphod-Beeblebrox said:
Rom Manager will need the Bootloader in order to do the installs. Rom Manager basically boots into recovery and installs the .zip file you downloaded.
If you don't Deodex your phone and install a theme, I do not think it will 'break', but your theme is likely to be half-a$$ed. Themes replace images (which should still work even if not de-odex) and they edit certain parts of other files (services.jar for example) to change the colors of some text. If your phone is Odexed, the coding for those colors will not be in the right place and thus won't change.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
so i have the stock 2.2 and it's rooted but i can't deodex the phone yet right?
quic said:
so i have the stock 2.2 and it's rooted but i can't deodex the phone yet right?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can Deodex. You can either follow the manual process (there is a thread in the Themes section.
Or if you want to download Rom Manager/Bootstrap, you can then either load a complete system (Nandroid backup) of a 2.2/rooted/deodexed system (There's one of these in the Themes section as well)
Or there is a version of the 928Droid Black Glass that supposedly will Deodex your system while it installs the theme ...
I deleted a few of my stock files with titanium backup pro. When I try to restore them, TBP just keeps saying restoring app+data & the status icon keeps spinning.
Is there a place I can download the stock apps I removed?
Thanks
You could probably find a stock ROM that matches your version in the development forum that you could get the apps from. It does not matter if you get a rooted version of the ROM. You just want to get the odexed stock ROM that you can get the apx and odex files to replace the ones that you have removed.
You are not supposed to remove stock system files, you are supposed to freeze them. You will probably have to reflash the rom to get those files back.
You can remove the system files if you are sure that you will never need them again. Freezing them is a way of preventing them from running without actually removing them... useful for testing to see if removing the program causes any unforeseen problems.
If you have removed a file and now have changed your mind about not wanting it (i.e. Now that it is football season you find that you really do want Sprint NFL back) it is also possible to get it back without reflashing. You can extract the apk and odex (if any) out of the stock ROM and place them back in system\app. I have done this with Root Explorer. Make sure that you set the permissions back (to 644) after copying the files.
og style said:
I deleted a few of my stock files with titanium backup pro. When I try to restore them, TBP just keeps saying restoring app+data & the status icon keeps spinning.
Is there a place I can download the stock apps I removed?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which stock are you running? 4.53, 4.24, 4.22, 3.70?
And which apps?
i have a stock rooted rom on here, and i just want the battery percent in the battery, but when i flashed the zip i got some stupid bootloop error talking about word counts or something, so i had to reflash it. i installed 4.24.651.3, and apparently the mod found here isn't compatible?
Go on your PC and go to uot kitchen Google will bring it up, go to the kitchen to upload files and extract the needed files from your phone systemui.apk framework-Res.apk and com.HTC.resources I believe are the 3 go to mod battery pick your icon and colors, make any other mods u want go to summary and submit your work wait for pickup, download and transfer to SD card, go to recovery wipe cache and dalvik, find zip and flash, reboot and profit
We are legion, for we are many
haha thanks... **** how did i not know about that? i gotta quit working so much
No prob can make lots of cool mods on there I use it to finish up and build the apks or zips for most of my themes, I use uot to add my battery icon and popups where I can see em b4 flashing em makes choosing colors much easier even tho I've been using almost all ics colors lately lol, but it makes the zip and/or apk for me so it saves me some hassle I just upload my pre modded files and then make the mods and build and bam flashable zip or installable apk without a ton of hassle
We are legion, for we are many
I cooked a battery percentage mod with the 4.67 and will try it and upload it to either my blog or my Personal file sharing site for any one to grab.
I thought i'd try a plain stock rom for a while, pruned of bloatware. So I downloaded the deodexed rom to my PC from here
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2529492
Now this rom is a hefty 390mb so I then opened it up with 7zip and deleted a load of crap from the system\app folder.
After saving and closing, the rom is now 303mb, which seems great.
Yet the current paranoid android rom for manta weighs in at only 155mb!
Why is that?
It seems that even though a lot of 'crap' has been deleted from system\app, there is still a huge amount of possibly linked 'crap' in the system\lib folder, which is 85mb (compressed). Within this folder are .so files which suspiciously similar names to the apps that I deleted from the system\lib folder. However even if I deleted the entire system\lib folder (which i'm sure would be a pretty bad idea), the resulting rom would still be 230mb compressed.
So my question is how can I trim all the bloat from the stock rom down to a compressed size that is similar to the current PA rom?
p.s. I'm planning to maybe flash the micro PA gapps separately.
Is there a chance that your size comparison has not accounted from flashing a Gapps package after flashing the custom ROM?
As an aside I also de-bloat stock but used System App Remover (Pro) from the playstore. Even though I could remove files myself using any root file manager, this app adds comments on what is safe to remove plus saves the removed files so you can restore them if you find later they are needed. I had such a case where I removed GMail as I prefer KMail. Later I wanted to use the "OK Google" voice feature which did not work until I restored GMail. I think the free version is all you need but I bought the pro version to support the developer.
from my Nexus 10 using XDA Premium HD app
No I don't think that's it. My 'trimmed' rom had all the gapps stripped out as far as I could tell by comparing with the system\app folder of the micro gapps zip, yet was still over 300mb.
Anyway if failed to flash in the end at the 'updating partition details' stage, so i'm back on PA for now. Might give that app you mentioned a try though, thanks for the tip.
Background: Really not loving the default New Contact icons and the random colors. Should be easy enough to change. What I tried (and failed miserably...)
MODest ROM 11 (Twiz/stock 6.01-based)
Flashpoint 5 Kernel
Copied SecContacts_M_OSup_Note_Legacy_USA.apk from
/system/priv-app/SecContacts_M_OSup_Note_Legacy_USA/
to my Win7 PC.
Used 7-Zip to unpack the file to a temporary folder.
Found the .qmg files I didn't like.
Found a .qmg that would be a passable replacement for the ones I didn't dig.
Made 11 copies of that image in a working folder.
Renamed each copy to the exact name of each of the 11 files I wanted to replace.
Dragged those 11 files back into the open .apk in 7-Zip
On the Phone, in Root Explorer:
Made a copy of SecContacts_M_OSup_Note_Legacy_USA.apk in the same folder:
/system/priv-app/SecContacts_M_OSup_Note_Legacy_USA/
deleted the original
Copied my mod'd apk back into this folder and set the perms.
Rebooted.
No Phone or Contacts on home screen or in Apps
Tried to 'install' the apk from Root Explorer.
Wouldn't install
Tried to delete cache & Dalvik from TWRP.
No Joy.
Tried to do a partial Nandroid restore of Contacts and sec.phone from Titanium (nothing there called /systempriv-app/SecContacts_M_OSup_Note_Legacy_USA)
No Joy.
Nandroid restore from TWRP.
Back to normal.
Okay, what did I do wrong, and how can I change the icons?
Should I have used APKTook instead of 7-Zip, created a new signature, etc?
Should my mod'd apk somehow be flashed from recovery rather than copied to a system folder?
Is this some perverted Samsung-ism that would have worked fine on any other phone on the planet?
Thanks for reading.
ForestCat said:
Background: Really not loving the default New Contact icons and the random colors. Should be easy enough to change. What I tried (and failed miserably...)
MODest ROM 11 (Twiz/stock 6.01-based)
Flashpoint 5 Kernel
Copied SecContacts_M_OSup_Note_Legacy_USA.apk from
/system/priv-app/SecContacts_M_OSup_Note_Legacy_USA/
to my Win7 PC.
Used 7-Zip to unpack the file to a temporary folder.
Found the .qmg files I didn't like.
Found a .qmg that would be a passable replacement for the ones I didn't dig.
Made 11 copies of that image in a working folder.
Renamed each copy to the exact name of each of the 11 files I wanted to replace.
Dragged those 11 files back into the open .apk in 7-Zip
On the Phone, in Root Explorer:
Made a copy of SecContacts_M_OSup_Note_Legacy_USA.apk in the same folder:
/system/priv-app/SecContacts_M_OSup_Note_Legacy_USA/
deleted the original
Copied my mod'd apk back into this folder and set the perms.
Rebooted.
No Phone or Contacts on home screen or in Apps
Tried to 'install' the apk from Root Explorer.
Wouldn't install
Tried to delete cache & Dalvik from TWRP.
No Joy.
Tried to do a partial Nandroid restore of Contacts and sec.phone from Titanium (nothing there called /systempriv-app/SecContacts_M_OSup_Note_Legacy_USA)
No Joy.
Nandroid restore from TWRP.
Back to normal.
Okay, what did I do wrong, and how can I change the icons?
Should I have used APKTook instead of 7-Zip, created a new signature, etc?
Should my mod'd apk somehow be flashed from recovery rather than copied to a system folder?
Is this some perverted Samsung-ism that would have worked fine on any other phone on the planet?
Thanks for reading.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That apk took me a long time to figure out too. It's one of the apps you I had to modify for multi dpi. The only way I know of is to change the compression when you're putting the app back together and even then it took a couple tries. There's probably a better way but the compression change seems to work well enough.
I don't know if 7-zip has this option, but with winrar you can change the compression to "store". You should know right away whether or not it worked. You'll see the little phone icon in the bottom left of the lock screen. You may still have to do a factory reset to see your changes (probably not though) but the app should work without it.
By the way, you can swap those image files for .png files if you'd like. Just delete the corresponding .qmg or .pio file.
I saw your post in the rom thread about theming TouchWiz. You should check out @supergrobi94's theming threads. He's put together an impressive collection of options for 6.0.1 and 5.1.1 and there's also a [how to] section that uses the vrtheme zip that will modify the res folder of a specific app without having to break it down. I'm not sure how active he is these days but he's always been very helpful with requests and questions in the past if you need it.
Supergrobi94's theming threads:
This one has all the themes
This is the [how to] thread
kevintm78 said:
That apk took me a long time to figure out too. It's one of the apps you I had to modify for multi dpi. The only way I know of is to change the compression when you're putting the app back together and even then it took a couple tries. There's probably a better way but the compression change seems to work well enough.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah, that makes perfect sense. But I'd never have figured it out myself, lol.
I'll dig into those theming threads, thanks.
kevintm78 said:
☆☆Edge Panel for ModestRom v11☆☆
DOWNLOAD-This will change your Contacts app to the S6 version and the IncallUI app to the Note 7 version because the people stripe will not work with the N4 contacts.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK, this is from the MODest ROM thread, but I think it's germain here.
SO.....
If I want to 'try out' that Edge Panel, is there a way to revert back to the stock apps in question other than restoring a nandroid backup or re-flashing the ROM?
I ask because I'm thinking that, at least in the case of the Note 4 and its well known memory problems, 'bulk' memory writes like ROMs, nandroid retores, etc., stress the device, so I'm trying not to do it more than I have to.
During my last episode(see above) putting the stock apk back in its original folder didn't work.
Is there a standard procedure for either android generically, or touchwiz specifically, for safely reverting back to the stock system apps after experimenting w/ custom stuff?
EDIT: Just tried something. In Root Explorer, went into:
/system/priv-app/SecContacts_M_OSup_Note_Legacy_USA/
and simply renamed the .apk to .foo
Rebooted.
No Contacts, as expected, but no Phone either??? Not sure why.
Anyway, back into Root Explorer.
Rename .foo back to .apk
Reboot.
Still no Contacts or Phone, so something bigger at work here.
Before I have to restore Nandroid anyway (unless there's a better way???),
I flashed your EdgePanel.zip in TWRP to see if it would restore the Phone/Contacts apps.
Wiped the cache. Reboot.
Edge Panel is now there, but still no Phone or Contacts. WTF???
Last resort-TWRP- Factory Reset.
Now the Contacts/Phone are back (and all my other stuff is gone, lol)
So is whacking the Data a necessity here?
If so, it makes trying out things related to the phone/contacts a LOT more tedious...
Any workaround???
Thanks again.
ForestCat said:
OK, this is from the MODest ROM thread, but I think it's germain here.
SO.....
If I want to 'try out' that Edge Panel, is there a way to revert back to the stock apps in question other than restoring a nandroid backup or re-flashing the ROM?
I ask because I'm thinking that, at least in the case of the Note 4 and its well known memory problems, 'bulk' memory writes like ROMs, nandroid retores, etc., stress the device, so I'm trying not to do it more than I have to.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, it doesn't look like I ever made an easy way to go back. I had thought I did but I'm either overlooking it or it's not there. Feel free to rifle through my androidfilehost folders if you want to double check. All of my stuff is very organized so it could be buried in there somewhere.
If you still need a recovery zip let me know and I'll get one together. I'm actually going to make one anyway but if you need it right away I can get on it. I didn't realize that there wasn't a way back to stock.
ForestCat said:
During my last episode(see above) putting the stock apk back in its original folder didn't work.
Is there a standard procedure for either android generically, or touchwiz specifically, for safely reverting back to the stock system apps after experimenting w/ custom stuff?
EDIT: Just tried something. In Root Explorer, went into:
/system/priv-app/SecContacts_M_OSup_Note_Legacy_USA/
and simply renamed the .apk to .foo
Rebooted.
No Contacts, as expected, but no Phone either??? Not sure why.
Anyway, back into Root Explorer.
Rename .foo back to .apk
Reboot.
Still no Contacts or Phone, so something bigger at work here.
Before I have to restore Nandroid anyway (unless there's a better way???),
I flashed your EdgePanel.zip in TWRP to see if it would restore the Phone/Contacts apps.
Wiped the cache. Reboot.
Edge Panel is now there, but still no Phone or Contacts. WTF???
Last resort-TWRP- Factory Reset.
Now the Contacts/Phone are back (and all my other stuff is gone, lol)
So is whacking the Data a necessity here?
If so, it makes trying out things related to the phone/contacts a LOT more tedious...
Any workaround???
Thanks again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is strange that they are not coming back. You may just want to double check your permissions and that there isn't two of the same apps in your folder. At the time of making that Edge zip I was still using other programs to make zips for me and the major downside to that is having to name the new apps the exact same as the old so it would get overwritten so if it doesn't match you'll end up with two active apps in one folder.
Now I think the best way to do that is to use a binary script (osm0sis has great tutorials for this) to change the app getting replaced to a .bak file and then just copy the new app to the system, set perms, and reboot (dalvik cache/ cache needs to be wiped if it's a framework .jar file). But to each their own. If you can get the job done a better way then I would use what you're comfortable with.
My system to test apps isn't much difference than yours. I think the only thing I do differently is change the app to be replaced to .bak instead of .foo although I can't imagine there's much difference. There's been a few apps like the Contacts app that gave me a bunch of trouble when modifying them but I can't remember ever having trouble bringing back the stock app. I wish I had more insight on that situation for you. If push comes to shove I would reflash the rom zip over factory reset only because the factory reset won't correct the system partition problem, if that's what's going on in this case.
kevintm78 said:
If you still need a recovery zip let me know and I'll get one together..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First, Merry Christmas!
Thanks very much. No rush on that, I'm OK on the Edge version for the minute.
What would be extremely useful if you have some time/curiousity would be to replicate my steps, ie renaming the untouched apk in a fresh MODest flash (i.e. break the contacts/phone function), and then see if you can get the whole thing working again without a factory reset, or if not, why. I see on xda, you & I are not the first ones to be tripping over this contacts.apk issue.
The other thing that would be telling is after successfully installing the Edge.zip, whether you can modify something (like a picture) within the contacts apk within the zip, reflash the zip and have contacts/phone still working with the change active.
I think there just HAS to be abetter way than Factory Resets.
Thanks so much again for the insights. I really want to become at least minimally competent at hacking my own ROMs together so I don't have to feel like such a noob/mooch on here, but I really do appreciate the help.
What are your weapons/platform of choice, or, if there are better tools for noobs learning the ropes, I'm all ears.
EDIT: Just found this. The last post is interesting...
https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s5/devs-only/recompile-seccontacts-apk-t3377142/page2
ForestCat said:
First, Merry Christmas!
Thanks very much. No rush on that, I'm OK on the Edge version for the minute.
What would be extremely useful if you have some time/curiousity would be to replicate my steps, ie renaming the untouched apk in a fresh MODest flash (i.e. break the contacts/phone function), and then see if you can get the whole thing working again without a factory reset, or if not, why. I see on xda, you & I are not the first ones to be tripping over this contacts.apk issue.
The other thing that would be telling is after successfully installing the Edge.zip, whether you can modify something (like a picture) within the contacts apk within the zip, reflash the zip and have contacts/phone still working with the change active.
I think there just HAS to be abetter way than Factory Resets.
Thanks so much again for the insights. I really want to become at least minimally competent at hacking my own ROMs together so I don't have to feel like such a noob/mooch on here, but I really do appreciate the help.
What are your weapons/platform of choice, or, if there are better tools for noobs learning the ropes, I'm all ears.
EDIT: Just found this. The last post is interesting...
https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-s5/devs-only/recompile-seccontacts-apk-t3377142/page2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not exactly sure what's going on with your contacts app not showing back up. Ever since modestrom v8 (I think) I've been doing the multi dpi on SecContacts_M_OSup_Note_Legacy_USA and every time I would test it doing the same as your way. After a reboot if the modified app was no good, then I would just delete that new app and change the name of the old app back to .apk, reboot and it would work again. I can't remember running in to any problems where I would have to factory reset or reflash the rom to get things working again.
There has been a couple times where I've had to factory reset to get a color change to show up or if you're adding toggles to the QS drop down that also (sometimes) requires a factory reset to show up.
As far as the post you linked, that is exactly how I do it except I use winrar to open the newly compiled app and drag the changes to the original. When I drag the changes over I change the compression method from "normal" to "store". If I don't change the compression the app doesn't work for me. The apps that I've ran into where I had to change the compression are: secContacts, secCamera, secSettings, and framework-res.apk. Any other app that I've worked on can be dragged and dropped without compression changes.
Jar files don't need an original signature though (so long as signature verification has been disabled, which it has in modestrom). They can be decompiled, edited, recompiled, and copied to the system. It does require a dalvik cache/cache wipe though on all framework files except for the framework-res.apk and twframework-res.apk
If you get a chance, you should start using apktool to decompile/recompile. It will make things easier for you in the long run and most of the time if you've made any mistakes in your edits apktool will catch it. If you're not familiar with apktool you can try using Tickle My Android or Advanced Apktool. You may also want to get Apktool by itself. I use all three of them. Android can be fickle and sometimes what works with one app won't work with another. What's nice about TMA and Advanced Apktool is that they'll do the drag and drop method for you, but when the compression needs to be changed that's when I use apktool by itself.
Sorry for the word vomit. Hopefully, this all makes sense.