PN ROM users - Layers or CMTE and why? - Nexus 6P Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Just looking to get into some discussion why some choose one or the other. I've been running CMTE past 3-4 builds mainly because the simplicity of using CMTE. Thinking of trying layers again though, even though its more confusing. So why are you guys choosing what you are?

I've been using layers since lollipop on my Nexus 5 so I'm used to it, CMTE seems simpler and less customizable to me while layers gives you options to customize different areas of your theme, for example in layers you can choose different app icons from different icon packs.

Layers does allow a few things that CMTE doesn't, but the UX is absolutely appalling. What makes matters worse is there's very little in the way of documentation so a lot of users simply can't work it out properly. CMTE can actually theme more than Layers can, and it's dead easy to use.

Related

Any actual themes?

I noticed that layers is really just coloring the UI. That said, are there any actual themes I can apply a la gs6?
no
Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk
abraxo said:
I noticed that layers is really just coloring the UI. That said, are there any actual themes I can apply a la gs6?
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Do you understand that that's all a theme is meant to do?
Heisenberg said:
Do you understand that that's all a theme is meant to do?
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Cm themes have the ability to make things look a lot different. I'm guessing that's what op is looking for.
akellar said:
Cm themes have the ability to make things look a lot different. I'm guessing that's what op is looking for.
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Layers themes even more than cm themes do.
Heisenberg said:
Layers themes even more than cm themes do.
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This is simply inaccurate, even the guy that started layers will admit that. There are things layers can't even touch that cmte can.
akellar said:
This is simply inaccurate, even the guy that started layers will admit that. There are things layers can't even touch that cmte can.
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There are things that Layers can't touch, but there are far more things that Layers can theme that cm can't.
Heisenberg said:
There are things that Layers can't touch, but there are far more things that Layers can theme that cm can't.
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Such as? Sorry but this is not true.
akellar said:
Such as? Sorry but this is not true.
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Well, apps for a start, and keyboards. Have you used Layers? I don't think Layers can change the boot animation, but I could be wrong about that. In terms of ease of use, CM probably comes out on top, it's a lot more user-friendly. Where Layers really excels is the amount of choice you have; there can be multiple options for each element. Anyway, we're kinda hijacking this thread now, but can you explain to me exactly what it is that the cm theme engine can theme that Layers can't?
Heisenberg said:
Well, apps for a start, and keyboards. Have you used Layers? I don't think Layers can change the boot animation, but I could be wrong about that. In terms of ease of use, CM probably comes out on top, it's a lot more user-friendly. Where Layers really excels is the amount of choice you have; there can be multiple options for each element. Anyway, we're kinda hijacking this thread now, but can you explain to me exactly what it is that the cm theme engine can theme that Layers can't?
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Yes used both plenty. Cm can theme the same apps in the same way layers does, but sure what you're referring to there? I will give you that you can piece apart themes easier in layers (at the expense of a user friendly experience). Cmte can change styles where layers cannot touch them. This allows for the larger element changes that you'll find in some cm themes and why many layers just seem to change colors. They both have their advantages but cm absolutely can touch more elements than layers.
akellar said:
Cm can theme the same apps in the same way layers does, but sure what you're referring to there?
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I don't recall cmte being able to theme apps and keyboards, but that could have more to do with my memory than anything else.
akellar said:
Cmte can change styles where layers cannot touch them. This allows for the larger element changes that you'll find in some cm themes and why many layers just seem to change colors.
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Can you be more specific? What do you mean by styles?
akellar said:
They both have their advantages but cm absolutely can touch more elements than layers.
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Again, please be more specific. What does cmte touch that Layers doesn't?
Heisenberg said:
I don't recall cmte being able to theme apps and keyboards, but that could have more to do with my memory than anything else.
Can you be more specific? What do you mean by styles?
Again, please be more specific. What does cmte touch that Layers doesn't?
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Yes it can theme apps and keyboards and has always been able to do so. Styles is a folder inside an apk that controls various visual elements. Cmte can alter this, layers cannot.
akellar said:
Yes it can theme apps and keyboards and has always been able to do so. Styles is a folder inside an apk that controls various visual elements. Cmte can alter this, layers cannot.
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Ok, thanks. What else?
Heisenberg said:
Ok, thanks. What else?
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Boot animations, fonts, audio files
akellar said:
Boot animations, fonts, audio files
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Ah yeah that's true. It is very well implemented, I'll give it that much. The one thing stopping me from using it is the fact that you need to be on a CM (or CM based) ROM to use it. I just don't see the sense in that on this device when you can get all of the same features in ROMs based on the official firmware (read: stable), but without all of the bugs that come with CM. One thing I really miss from CM though is the System Profiles feature, that's awesome.

Stock vs AOSP vs CM

Coming from Samsung and Sony where there was a big difference are all Roms basically the same base on the X Style. Are there differences that I should be aware of?
Thanks
Edit Title should say AOSP!
Sent from my XT1572 using Tapatalk
I'd say the only reason to go cutom ROM on this phone would be customization. The stock ROM is pretty reliable, fast, and easy on the battery. Especially if you start tuning up the custom kernels how you like them.
Stock doesn't feel like it's dragging a frickin boat anchor or god awful at memory management like on a Samsung. This phone doesn't have an ugly, laggy vendor skin. With MM (and root) you can use RRO layers to theme it - no custom ROM required. I've run custom ROMs for years because...Samsung. I'm kind of tired of flaky bluetooth, FCs, and stuff that just doesn't quite work right but is better than Touchwiz.
The only thing I'd really like to have that custom ROMs make available would be double tap status bar to sleep, status bar brightness slider, and notification led; most everything else honestly goes in the stuff I don't use / forget about category (well...slim recents would be nice too). You could tackle most of that with XPosed too, but that brings its own baggage. I've tried out a few of the custom ROM offerings, and for now I keep going back to stock. They're good, but not good enough for me to give up that stock stability when stock is so close to pure AOSP. We have Multirom too, so that makes test driving multiple ROMs really easy.
As for AOSP vs. CM, I'm pretty sure all the custom ROMs you'll find here have a CM base. You can find Broken for this phone too, and it usually uses an AOSP-CAF base. I haven't actually checked Broken out yet.
jason2678 said:
I'd say the only reason to go cutom ROM on this phone would be customization. The stock ROM is pretty reliable, fast, and easy on the battery. Especially if you start tuning up the custom kernels how you like them.
Stock doesn't feel like it's dragging a frickin boat anchor or god awful at memory management like on a Samsung. This phone doesn't have an ugly, laggy vendor skin. With MM (and root) you can use RRO layers to theme it - no custom ROM required. I've run custom ROMs for years because...Samsung. I'm kind of tired of flaky bluetooth, FCs, and stuff that just doesn't quite work right but is better than Touchwiz.
The only thing I'd really like to have that custom ROMs make available would be double tap status bar to sleep, status bar brightness slider, and notification led; most everything else honestly goes in the stuff I don't use / forget about category (well...slim recents would be nice too). You could tackle most of that with XPosed too, but that brings its own baggage. I've tried out a few of the custom ROM offerings, and for now I keep going back to stock. They're good, but not good enough for me to give up that stock stability when stock is so close to pure AOSP. We have Multirom too, so that makes test driving multiple ROMs really easy.
As for AOSP vs. CM, I'm pretty sure all the custom ROMs you'll find here have a CM base. You can find Broken for this phone too, and it usually uses an AOSP-CAF base. I haven't actually checked Broken out yet.
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Thanks for the reply... I think I'm more concerned about flashing the wrong kernel.
For example I'm used to say flashing a Stock kernel on my Z2 Sony ROM, I could opt for CM Rom and know I need CM kernel. This difference seem so much more blurred here on the Moto X Style.
Also for example we have BlissPure, PureBliss, FrakenClark and Stock optimised [@VadimTk] there doesn't seem to be an easy way of knowing which ROMs they can be flashed on.
I'm new to Moto's so learning fast!
Frankenclark and vadim's are stock.
Bliss is for cm base.
The frankenclark dev dirtyhank has been bringing some great features lately, and hashbang has been picking them up and baking them into his aicp builds too.
jason2678 said:
I'd say the only reason to go cutom ROM on this phone would be customization. The stock ROM is pretty reliable, fast, and easy on the battery. Especially if you start tuning up the custom kernels how you like them.
Stock doesn't feel like it's dragging a frickin boat anchor or god awful at memory management like on a Samsung. This phone doesn't have an ugly, laggy vendor skin. With MM (and root) you can use RRO layers to theme it - no custom ROM required. I've run custom ROMs for years because...Samsung. I'm kind of tired of flaky bluetooth, FCs, and stuff that just doesn't quite work right but is better than Touchwiz.
The only thing I'd really like to have that custom ROMs make available would be double tap status bar to sleep, status bar brightness slider, and notification led; most everything else honestly goes in the stuff I don't use / forget about category (well...slim recents would be nice too). You could tackle most of that with XPosed too, but that brings its own baggage. I've tried out a few of the custom ROM offerings, and for now I keep going back to stock. They're good, but not good enough for me to give up that stock stability when stock is so close to pure AOSP. We have Multirom too, so that makes test driving multiple ROMs really easy.
As for AOSP vs. CM, I'm pretty sure all the custom ROMs you'll find here have a CM base. You can find Broken for this phone too, and it usually uses an AOSP-CAF base. I haven't actually checked Broken out yet.
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Quick note. Nova Prime launcher offers double tap to sleep. Definitely recommend it.
Ditamae said:
Quick note. Nova Prime launcher offers double tap to sleep. Definitely recommend it.
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I've tried that with Nova, but you have to double tap blank space on a screen, not an app or widget. I actually have swipe up mapped to screen off with Nova because that seems to work anywhere. I agree it's a pretty good substitute.
I think I could get everything I want/need with stock and xposed. I'll maybe root this weekend and see how I on with rooted stock mm...
Sent from my XT1572 using Tapatalk
Coming from Samsung to Motorola my only complaint really about stock is missing features that I just wouldn't expect to be missing. The two that stick out most for me is the lack of a number row on the stock keyboard and a lack of an interface for a clipboard for copy and paste. Obviously a lot of these things can be supplemented with apps and mods but that kinda defeats the purpose of having a stock experience.
Edit: Oh and no option for battery percent in the status bar but I found a trick to enable that without any modifications.
Agent. said:
Coming from Samsung to Motorola my only complaint really about stock is missing features that I just wouldn't expect to be missing. The two that stick out most for me is the lack of a number row on the stock keyboard and a lack of an interface for a clipboard for copy and paste. Obviously a lot of these things can be supplemented with apps and mods but that kinda defeats the purpose of having a stock experience.
Edit: Oh and no option for battery percent in the status bar but I found a trick to enable that without any modifications.
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Yeah I found the battery % trick/app early....
Data/network indicators, centre clock. I use google KB, so have the numbers.
Not sure what you mean by no copy/paste clipboard?
Agent. said:
Coming from Samsung to Motorola my only complaint really about stock is missing features that I just wouldn't expect to be missing. The two that stick out most for me is the lack of a number row on the stock keyboard and a lack of an interface for a clipboard for copy and paste. Obviously a lot of these things can be supplemented with apps and mods but that kinda defeats the purpose of having a stock experience.
Edit: Oh and no option for battery percent in the status bar but I found a trick to enable that without any modifications.
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rowlers said:
Yeah I found the battery % trick/app early....
Data/network indicators, centre clock. I use google KB, so have the numbers.
Not sure what you mean by no copy/paste clipboard?
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Y'all two care to share your little trick? I haven't come across center clock on Moto Stock without using Xposed.
cerobles1 said:
Y'all two care to share your little trick? I haven't come across center clock on Moto Stock without using Xposed.
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Sorry, xposed IS needed for centre clock AFAIK...
I personally hate CM. Ever since my first Android phone I've always avoided it. I tried BlissROM and wasn't happy with it. I haven't used an AOSP ROM for any phone since my MyTouch4G. The ROM I'm currently using is TruePureX, and it's been going great. It's stock, but without bloat and a few added features. Then I add Xposed and GravityBox and it's perfect.
rowlers said:
Yeah I found the battery % trick/app early....
Data/network indicators, centre clock. I use google KB, so have the numbers.
Not sure what you mean by no copy/paste clipboard?
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On my Samsung Galaxy S5 there was a clipboard where I could manage previously cut and copied content, not just the last item.
cerobles1 said:
Y'all two care to share your little trick? I haven't come across center clock on Moto Stock without using Xposed.
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The trick allows you to enable the battery percentage as well as a few other things and can be found here.

Themes and performance

First off I just want say I love the ability to theme androids and there are some awesome themes out there. But it seems like not matter how I apply themes CM theme changer, Layers, Substratum, etc that they affect the performance of my phone. I'm not saying it's terrible but I always seem to get more stutters and micro lag while running themes. It isn't terrible and not really enough for me to not run themes but if I revert back to the stock them it seems a lot of this goes away and the phone seems to perform better. Has anyone else noticed this or is it all in my head?
znel52 said:
First off I just want say I love the ability to theme androids and there are some awesome themes out there. But it seems like not matter how I apply themes CM theme changer, Layers, Substratum, etc that they affect the performance of my phone. I'm not saying it's terrible but I always seem to get more stutters and micro lag while running themes. It isn't terrible and not really enough for me to not run themes but if I revert back to the stock them it seems a lot of this goes away and the phone seems to perform better. Has anyone else noticed this or is it all in my head?
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I have no noticeable theme lag on dirty unicorns. I don't lean towards heavy themes though
Sent from my Nexus 6P using XDA-Developers mobile app

Confused about theming

I'm new to Sony devices and was looking to get a dark theme set up on my new X Compact. After digging around I'm pretty confused abut the whole thing and thought I'd ask for some help here.
I'm looking for white text on a black background. I think I'm doing something wrong here, because I can't seem to find a white on black theme in the native Xperia themes, but I can find one for Substratum. This seems odd because my understanding was that Substratum was a port of Sony's Overlay Manager Service.
In any event, from my understanding I've got 2 options:
1) Install OmniROM and Substratum
2) Install CM13 and use the built in theme engine
I'm a bit reluctant to install CM13 as it's still in alpha, which leaves me with the OmniROM solution. Is this accurate? (I should note, that it's great to see so much development for the X Compact so soon after launch!)
Thanks so much for any help.
I am not sure what you mean when you say you can't find a theme with white text on black background. Unless you mean that you want the theme to be always black, even in the settings and similar apps. That isn't possible, because since Kitkat Android (at least for Xperia) has two modes: bright theme and dark theme. The settings are always bright. I tried myself to invert the bright theme making it dark, but far too many things get unreadable because they aren't 100% customisable.
Still if you want to give a try with a a dark theme you may want to try this one. It's free (and don;t worry, the link doesn't have any ad. It's from Google shortner): https://goo.gl/PHyqRH
If you don't like it you can simply uninstall it and try another one. There are tons of free black themes. personally I'll never go as far as unlocking the bootloader and install a custom ROM just to have some different themes. Also because apparently most of the support for custom ROMs is ending. Cyanogenmod closed, for example. It has been taken over by someone else, but it won't probably be the same thing.
Thanks so much for your help with this. The monochrome theme you directed me to has some dark elements for sure, but I was looking for a completely black background. To be honest, I've been a bit surprised at how much I'm bothered by the white backdrop, especially at night. I've been using a dark CM theme on another phone for years, and didn't really think that a small change like this would make such a difference to me.
I think you understand what I'm looking for, but just to confirm here are some links to the play store:
Black Background using CM13: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blissroms.moelle.ddoverhauled
Black Background using Substratum: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brit.swiftblack.layers
Nope. As I wrote the stock Android for Xperia doesn't support the dark panels on the bright themes. Or better, it's possible to put dark backgrounds in a bright theme, but after that far too many elements get unreadable. Dark text for starting, which can't be changed. The clock and SMS apps get quite messy for example.
The CM ROMs have its own customisation engine, different from the one Sony has implemented for the Xperia phones (and thus as far as I know their themes are not compatible). The same I believe applies to SubStratum, which I don't know. But I suppose you need root to install it. And also it may conflict with the Xperia customisation.
Still there are plenty of great themes that change the backgrounds to different colours or even images. They won't be totally dark, but they are a relief from the obnoxious pure white. Blue themes are usually the best for that purpose. Also the Golden themes are quite popular at the moment. This (still free) at least removes the white, replacing it with gold color: https://goo.gl/WK9yGm

why the interface of these custom ROMS so ugly?

this hinders a lot users to really use these roms. For a simple example, the status bar icons on all the custom roms are very ugly. These wireless icon is just a filled triangle. Why no developers try to make the interface prettier?
Get out, you drunk m8.
For one it's pretty, for another ugly. It's just stock looking. Devs can add battery or range changers, but who cares? Stock-looking is so good.
It's Google's material design. Just use a substratum theme if you don't like the status bar icons lol.
lol
Sent from my LEX720 using Tapatalk
Run Miui it's pretty if nothing else.
Show us first what you think are prettier.
you should ask why most stock ROMs have better battery than custom ROMs then it's easier for other to answer you
Dafuq! Lol! I roll on my bed literally and laughing hilariously.
By a lot of users, did you mean you?
Sent from my LEX727 using Tapatalk
overdrunk said:
this hinders a lot users to really use these roms. For a simple example, the status bar icons on all the custom roms are very ugly. These wireless icon is just a filled triangle. Why no developers try to make the interface prettier?
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They do, they're called themers, and they make substratum themes:laugh:

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