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Icon pack creation tutorial with Android Studio ? (self.askandroid)
submitted 3 months ago by echdaron to c/askandroid
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Hi there,

Only 2 weeks ago, I was on a jailbroken iOS device and got fed up with it (and everything that Apple produces - mostly because it's closed down and some proprietary crap like iTunes). And the reason I jailbroke my phone, was mostly for the theming options (place a .png with a specific app name in the folder, select it and that's it)...

Switched to a Oneplus12 last week, loving it, so easy to tweak things out of the box and installed some free icon packs but I can't seem to figure out how to proceed in creating my own icon pack (for personal use). Had a look inside an apk and I have now a basic understanding of the resources inside but swapping out files in an apk isn't the way to go (CRC check done by Android?). Had a look around and installed Android Studio but are there any up-to-date tutorials out there?

thanks! /d

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[-] owenfromcanada@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

When you're talking about icon packs, do you mean to replace the app icons in your launcher?

To my understanding, there are launchers that would allow you to install a custom icon pack, but most default launchers won't allow you to customize the icons.

The launcher I made has a mechanism for creating your own icon packs, and I also have a built-in tool for creating nice-looking monochrome icons from the originals. If you're into a more minimalistic approach, give it a try.

[-] echdaron 1 points 3 months ago

Indeed - it's the icons on my home screen (and the rest of the pages)

And thanks for the pointer to your launcher but there's something unusual with the device I have along with the OS (I think it's OxygenOS 14) - your launcher (eg) can't be installed or used as such and I have to start with an apk (that eventually appears in a window where you can select that collection and also select one of the icons inside)

[-] Cris_Color@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago

This isn't something I'm particularly familiar with so this comment is largely just engagement, but I will say it seems like a lot of icon packs use some kind of template app that they populate with their icons. So the app will be the same but with assets swapped out for the given icon pack. It might be worth looking for some of those templates folks use for publishing icon packs

Maybe someone who knows more about this could chime in with more info

Also worth knowing about if you enjoy customization are kustom live wallpaper (KLWP) and kustom widget (KWGT), which aside from icon packs are often kinda the bread and butter of android theming. Custom launchers are also good to know about, nova launcher seems to be the gold standard to many when it comes to customization features (though they were recently acquired by an analytics company which has raised some eyebrows from privacy focused folks, though I'm not actually aware of any specific problems that have been identified at this point)

[-] echdaron 3 points 3 months ago

Thanks Cris :-) I appreciate you taking the time to reply anyway... (even though you state you're not that familiar with it) But yeah, there are apps on Android that do this (I think it's called Icon Studio 2?) but these don't work on my Oneplus 12 launcher. At least : the apk is generated but the program says that my launcher isn't supported... But besides that : using an app on my phone to create about a hundred icons is... cumbersome. And I would like to prefer to do this somewhat faster on my Windows machine and learn something new while doing it :-) It's also easier (I think) to update it for future installations of new apps...

And that live wallpaers and widgets : that's something for later on :-) I am rather happy with the default launcher currently (have tried Nova and read up on the drama behind it so I'm currently avoiding it - also because I don't like it as much currently) and I'm a simple man : changing my icons to something I like and I'm also a happy man :-)

[-] Cris_Color@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

I was thinking of something more akin to an open source app that developers would take and populate with their icons. If you download a ton of icon packs you'll notice many of them share the same ui. I'm familiar with icon pack studio, and yeah that'd be a pain lol. Its helpful sometimes to fill in the gaps when I want something basic, but I was thinking of something different. I wish I knew a better way to describe it, or more about what projects folks might be using to package their icons for people, but this is really beyond my area. I'm much more an art/design nerd than a technical person

And thats totally fair :) welcome to android, and I hope you're able to find what you need to customize things the way you'd like!

[-] echdaron 2 points 3 months ago

That would be phenomenal... but... those are not around? I think?

The things I've found are :

  1. https://github.com/materialos/android-icon-pack?tab=readme-ov-file - this is an 'open source' icon pack but I need to figure out how I can use this as a base to start out... Especially as they also mention that they've been fixing the theming of (eg) VLC > might come in handy to wrap my head around this whole icon customization thing
  2. https://rootjunky.com/creating-first-android-icon-pack/ - outdated and the template isn't available anymore

And from this technical geek who likes other tech things and fancy UI's : I did understand what you mean :-) And thanks, hope that too but I'm in no hurry and glad I've switched - never expected Android to be this phenomenal :-)

[-] limerod@reddthat.com 3 points 3 months ago

Icon pack studio from smart launcher should fulfill your needs

[-] echdaron 2 points 3 months ago

Thanks but alas - the icon packs generated with this app don't work with the Oneplus 12 (the launcher isn't supported)

this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
17 points (100.0% liked)

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