Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Theming for dummies - replace the icons inside themes from Samsung's Store - no root

So this is a simple how to aimed to people with unrooted phones that still want to replace the icons inside Samsung Themes.

First of all, just a bit of theory:)

1) Samsung Thems are simple apk files, so you can edit them and re-install without any trouble, they don't need a particular signature by Samsung.

2) The icons inside such themes are in qmg format, which is a proprietary format that cannot be converted without Samsung Theme designer's kit or by using the built-in converter which is in our phones... It's something that packs a png file and an xml one andnot even imagemagick for Linux can convert it.... No problem, you can replace qmg files in themes with png files flawlessly, you just need to rename them as png:)

So, you need apk extractor (see play store) which can extract installed apk very easily (even system files) without root and apkeditor pro (see play store as well) wich is a very handy tool for minimal decompiling. I am not affiliated to apk editor pro and you can obviously do the same thing with apk tool and a pc, though this simple how to is for 'noob dummy themers' and it makes more sense to use just your phone than apktool.

Once you have installed such apps, open apk extractor and look for the apk you must edit. Let's say you want to edit the material theme by Cambunch (see galaxy store). So, you will find two apk files with cambunch etc.... Choose the first one, the one with the words appicon inside and extract it. It will be placed into the folder ExtractedApk

I don't like, in such theme, the icons for calendar and messages, which are green and yellow, so I replaced them with google original ones. Just download them somewhere and rename them to qmg. I mean, if the original file was named message.png, just rename it to message.qmg for example.

Now open apk editor pro and choose to edit an apk file, go to ExtractedApk folder, choose the theme you have extracted and choose simple edit....

You should see a partially decompiled apk.... Go to res folder and then open the drawable etc.. folder

Inside that folder you'll see several qmg files... Look for the one that refers to message (the names are quite self explanatory) and click the 'pen' option, then use the file manager to choose the icon message.qmg you've saved as said above and replace the original one with the new icon. It can obviously been done with any icon inside that folder.

Now follow the steps suggested by the app itself and install the new apk over the former and your theme will have been updated.

If the theme had already been applied, move to a different one (even the default one) and then apply it back to see the changes.

Very simple:)


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