Database Develop

change menus from White on Black to Black on White?

Many of the default Android menus are white text on a black background. Not only do I find these visually unappealing, they are actually counter productive given how poorly dark themes read in sunlight.
Can these be changed to black text on a white background (or light background) instead? Does anyone have a theme they can share to accomplish this? Thank you.

OK, I guess this is not possible. It's a shame because I find Android's list based menus awfully plain and unaesthetic. White text on a black background with little visual art...it really looks like a plain vanilla terminal of yesteryear. While I love Android's openness, customization, and tweaker-friendly platform, it really needs a major overhaul in terms of looks and user friendliness. In short, the GUI needs some polish and consistency.

It would appear that Android has built-in "themes" for apps to use. If none is specified, then the dark or black theme is used. I wonder if there is a way to force apps to use the "light" theme even if specified otherwise. Perhaps a custom ROM could be created to always use the light theme.
http://www.anddev.org/tutorial_ui_themes-t4367.html

i know this thread is old enogh, but i'm searching for a answer to this question too.

Same here, I´m looking for a solution to this problem
For me is near impossible to read white letters on black background, and i have a new ZTE Blade that can´t use because this
If someone have a solution, please !!!
Thanks!

Recently this has been bugging me as well. I wish there was a very simple way to perhaps tweak the framework and systemui so that black on white can become a reality...

This is totally feasible. You would have to do a bunch of XML edits in your framework-res.apk and declare everything correctly.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium

Changing the theme style in styles.xml should work I guess... if I have little to do I can take a look
Sent from my Hero using XDA App

Okay, I've done it, just gotta see if I've caused any bugs and write a how to
Edit: Bah, it's hard, the whole system and lots of apps are based on how it is now, changing it causes lots of trouble. Don't know if I'll make it :/

Btw, I did it in my cm7 theme. You can see it in my signature
Sent from my Hero using XDA

AWESOME. There are some issues though, such as black text on dark backgrounds in the music app, which I'm guessing would take more than some xml editing to fix. But other than that it's GREAT!

EnMod said:
AWESOME. There are some issues though, such as black text on dark backgrounds in the music app, which I'm guessing would take more than some xml editing to fix. But other than that it's GREAT!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks I have fixed most of these issues I think, but one of the issues was kind of tricky, cause when I fix them, I create others :/ and I don't have the stock music app installed atm, I will install it and see the issue myeself

Habarug said:
Thanks I have fixed most of these issues I think, but one of the issues was kind of tricky, cause when I fix them, I create others :/ and I don't have the stock music app installed atm, I will install it and see the issue myeself
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't see that theme anymore in your signature. Would it be possible for you to share it? I'm still in search of a way to get Android to be a bit lighter (outside of going with MIUI), which I find far more visually appealing.

Wallpaper Clock App free today on Amazon Appstore..

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81NscgTYUkL._SX300_.png
Just thought I would share...
Your wallpaper can look good and still be useful. Display the day, date, time, WiFi service set identifier, and battery status boldly across a background of your choice. Get what you need at a glance and like what you see.
Love the Way It Looks
Using the sliding color scales, create the precise font color you desire. Add an outline for additional flair, and choose its color, opacity, and thickness. An endless array of background choices enhance the personalized and polished finish of the wallpaper. Select or create a color using the apps sliding color scale, or use any background image from your device or the Internet. Play a slideshow of images from a selected directory for a varying duration- -yep, you can pick that too.
Appreciate Its Purpose
Conveniently display what you want, how you want. Down to the details, wp clock full offers a variety of ways to personalize the format. It supports both 12- and 24-hour clock modes. Using checkboxes or dropdown menus, determine what to include on your screen, including clock position, time format, battery status, operator name, and more. It's a simple app, offering useful information in an aesthetically pleasing package.
Get wp clock full from the Amazon Appstore...I did. Check it out - http://amzn.to/g6SHYQ
Miui 1.8.5 w/V6 Ram script, 3g Booster & Kick Ass Kernel Tweaks

[Theme] Blue WIP

Ok so been hard at work making a nice blue theme. 90% done and looking real nice. Dug alot of xml files and change alot of major system text colors, still got few more to find. Some screen shots are located here:
http://www.tigerznet.com/xoom
Things to notice
Icons are standard blue
The shadows and outlines are blue
Big clocks are standard blue/dark blue
Major system texts light blue
Descriptions a turquoise color
Running on hammerhead but suggested to use morays battery icons.
This is based on wifi model, still gotta dig up the 3g models.
Disabled text/buttons/icons still gray, left these as is for sakes of easily seeing they disabled.
Thing up coming:
Removal of Redundant battery level in quick panel.
Notification text still gray/white
Apps word still white (did change xml didnt work some reason)
Adjust icons for 3g models.
Any other suggestions from you.
Let me know what you think and any suggestions welcomed.

looks good so far

System wide Style Sheets

This is an idea I have from my experience using themes on my Samsung Captivate. My experiences i describe apply particularly to the AOKP builds for that device and a few others. However the concepts are something which would be implemented at a system level and I think it would be applicable for any Android device, so I wanted to share it here in the general forum as well.
I like the color picker in Rom Control for ICS AOKP, but I was surprised that you pick and choose each color separately for clock, signal, etc. There is the hard-coded button to recall the ICS holo blue. I would love to see another button that stores a user selected color instead of copying and pasting the hex codes, although that works. And then the wireless signal is a graphic image that you cant change without flashing a .zip to modify system png and the like. I wondered if it could be coded to use a triangle with a fill color based on something from the color picker, and then lay over top of that grey or black bars for the part that should be 'off'. maybe layers arent possible? tho it appears that they are being used, and i have seen overlap of the data signal on top of the wireless bars. right? I know there is a LOT of stuff these amazing developers are working on which keeps them very busy already. These are just some ideas
I noticed looking through some of the code in AOKP gerrit for the theme chooser updates, that they started using variables instead of a hard coded ICS holo blue color. but it seems as if there is no user interaction for that color, its still a hard coded value set in a single location instead of being hard coded in multiple locations. So it is a huge improvement Im sure for themers who have to try to search out and modify every instance of those values. I would just like to see it progress to something where the end user can modify that variable from Rom Control.
It would be even more awesome if Android used a system wide style sheet setup. background, checkbox style, text color, font, font size, perhaps it could even include specs for headers, paragraphs, tables, titles, etc. but that would be WAY more than I am thinking. It certainly works nicely for web design tho.
This would then be something that other apps could also read and implement into their design as well. Then we wouldn't have to create hacked SMS and google play, and tapatalk, etc, etc, etc. to make them inverted or red, green, orange, blue, yellow, etc.
Of course having an option to over-ride those settings is cool too, maybe you want an all orange theme, but you want white on your keyboard keys. a keyboard app could have a selector built into its settings which allows you to follow the system setting or pick your own base color, or go with the developers default choice. There are a lot of great developers out there who make gorgeous apps that deserve to keep their defaults, ie. 1weather. So I am sure apps would ship with their own defaults turned on, so the user is guaranteed the experience they intended.
I do think these ideas seem inline with what google is trying to accomplish with their unified design standards.
I am imagining a day where I can change my wallpaper and then open settings, use a color picker (maybe even one that can pick a color from the wallpaper ... Then maybe choose black or white, or gradient or transparent background. Two steps, and just that simply and quickly my whole system is color themed to compliment. Then using Tasker this could even be automated for work, home, weekends, etc. LOL.
Ok iphone, take that!

OK so I guess 187 people looked and decided that was way toooo much to read.
LOL
Sent from my SGH-I897 using Tapatalk 2

[Q] How to force all icons to conform accent color?

Some icons have color which is not changing with accent (both native (e.g. games) or 3rd party (e.g. endomondo)). And it is pretty ugly in the end with some accent color combination.
Is there any way, how to force all icons to conform accent color? (Or at least is there any way how to change color of such icons manually one by one?)
Thank you!

Icons are set by the apps. Short of modifying the app before installing it, which is only really practical on homebrew apps, there is no way to do what you ask.
Icons which have no background color specified will use the system accent color. Icons which have a specified color will use that, instead. This is not really controllable at all.

This app *might* do the job, but I haven't tried it.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2234011

If the app does not follow the standard, then sorry that there's no way to change that.

With all due respect, that is a pretty silly thing to ask. It's like suggesting that there ought to be a way in Windows to force all apps taskbar icons to be a specific color. That would require that the OS be able to detect the "background" color of every app tile (it would inevitably get some of them wrong, even leaving aside the ones where there isn't any real "background" or "skin" color and every color on the tile means something), then require it to modify the tile of every app that gets installed, either at install time (which is possible, but would require changing the tile images in every app) or at runtime (which would be a waste of CPU/GPU power, and therefore battery power).
Now if you want to argue that Microsoft should enforce, when accepting apps into the Store, that no app has a solid background color rather than using a transparent background (which will then be set to the current theme's accent color) ... that's actually a valid argument, since in that case it would be determined by human judgment and the change would be made before the app gets pushed out to everybody's phone. However, they didn't do that (which I'm, personally, totally OK with) and it's a little late to start now.