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Show your Pride with our rainbow theme pack

13 Comments
Posted by Ara Wagoner on 12 Jun 2017 12:00 pm
How do I theme my phone for Pride? It honors the Stonewall Riots from 1969. There are memorials and ceremonies nationwide to honor those in the LGBTQIA community who have been lost throughout the year. There are parades and parties throughout month to celebrate the progress that has been made and to savor the freedom to live as we wish, in the sun as once we could only in the shadows of...

How to make a custom icon for Android

19 Comments
Posted by Ara Wagoner on 18 May 2017 12:00 pm
Theming icons with a pack is pretty awesome. But they can't do everything. Icon packs have holes. Icon packs sometimes miss. And when you're theming your phone, maybe what you need isn't in an icon pack at all. That's OK. We don't need no stinkin' icon packs. We can edit together our own custom icons! It's easy. All you need is some kind of photo editor — be it the latest Photoshop or free...

No, you don't need root to theme your phone

61 Comments
Posted by Ara Wagoner on 8 May 2017 9:00 am
"That looks really cool! Did you have to root to do that?" "No, I did not." When you think about theming, it's very easy to think about root customizations, from theming your nav bar to giving every app a dark mode, whether it came with one or not. Even my editors thought I'd end up writing about root a lot when I started down this path, and I don't blame them. It's easy to think that...

Go Rogue with these Star Wars themes

18 Comments
Posted by Ara Wagoner on 4 May 2017 1:00 pm
I find your lack of Star Wars theme disturbing. Update May 4th: We revisit these great themes for Rogue One to celebrate Star Wars Day!   It's opening night. You're all ready for your midnight showing: got your tickets, got your perfect Star Wars shirt picked out, or maybe a whole ensemble if you're aiming to win that costume contest… but is your phone as decked out as your lovely self? No?...

The many, many ways of theming your Samsung Galaxy S8

11 Comments
Posted by Ara Wagoner on 4 May 2017 11:30 am
Be different, not the same. We strive for individuality in life, and nowhere should we strive for it more than in our phones, a digital extension of ourselves and for many an embodiment of our lives. Samsung gets this, which is why for the last few years, we've been able to theme the system and several core apps on the phone to match our tastes with Samsung Themes. This year, that theming...

How to use gestures to become an Android home screen expert

20 Comments
Posted by Ara Wagoner on 10 Apr 2017 1:00 pm
Gestures have been an iconic piece of the mobile computing experience since the beginning — even without an icon. Slide-to-unlock. Pinch-to-zoom. Double-tap-to-wake. Gestures that work well are invaluable to a user's experience, and Android phone manufacturers are bringing these gestures to the home screen in deceptively simple and astonishingly successful ways. Case in point: both the...

Home screen layouts and how to theme them

122 Comments
Posted by Ara Wagoner on 6 Apr 2017 12:00 pm
Making your home screen look pretty is not a requirement. Putting things on it is. Even if you don't actively theme your phone, you do actively lay out your home screen. Layouts are the way you arrange the apps and widgets on your home screen. We don't talk about them nearly as much when theming as we should. In fact, I try to avoid specific layouts in my themes so they are more accessible to...

Google's #MyAndroid Taste Test gives bad results. Here's how to make them better

9 Comments
Posted by Ara Wagoner on 22 Mar 2017 6:00 am
Had a taste of Android theming with the #myAndroid Taste Test? Android has always been a bastion of customization, but it hasn't exactly been well-advertised, by Google or by the various manufacturers that ship it on their devices. Google is now looking to highlight that flexibility and creativity with its new #myAndroid campaign, looking to showcase how diverse and delightful our home screens...

These Beauty and the Beast themes will bring some magic to your Android phone

3 Comments
Posted by Ara Wagoner on 16 Mar 2017 1:00 pm
Theme as old as time… true as it can be… Beauty and the Beast is coming back to theaters with a big, bold, live-action telling of our favorite bookworm princess. As a diehard Disney fan, this means breaking out the Nova Launcher and the KWGT to get my theme on. There's a lot of iconic characters to cover in Beauty and the Beast, and without further ado, here they are! We invite you to relax,...

How to personalize your Android phone with themes, launchers, and more!

54 Comments
Posted by Ara Wagoner on 8 Mar 2017 2:16 pm
Every Android user has a theme on their phone. They just don't know it yet. Updated March 2017: Links were added to newer content and images were refreshed. Even if you don't know what icon packs or launchers are, if your phone has a home screen on it, it's got a theme. Android users don't have to live in their app drawers; they can choose how their phone looks and functions. They can use...

App Shortcuts on Nova Launcher: A little taste of Nougat

30 Comments
Posted by Ara Wagoner on 22 Feb 2017 1:00 pm
App Shortcuts are cool, if you can get them. Problem being most can't. App Shortcuts — the little dropdown menu of shortcuts sorted into specific activities — came with Android 7.1 rather than 7.0, and haven't been widely implemented in the 4 months since it started rolling out in the Android 7.1 developer preview. It's half Force Touch, half gestures on steroids, and all awesome when...

How Android theming helped me find my inner artist

33 Comments
Posted by Ara Wagoner on 17 Feb 2017 3:00 pm
I'm all about expressing myself. I'm the girl with the Disney shirt on every day, with a beautiful case for my phone, my headphones on top of my jeep cap, and a song in my heart, if not on my lips. I spent some of my schooling years hiding who I am as a means to escape bullying, and I'm done with that. I'm done with hiding. I believe in being who I am and I believe in showing who I am in the...

Get pumped for the big game with our Super Bowl themes!

5 Comments
Posted by Ara Wagoner on 2 Feb 2017 2:00 pm
ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALLLLLLL?????!!!!!!! The parties are prepped. The commercials are cued. The fans have completely taken Houston — as an Austinite, you can have it, by the by. Super Bowl LI is Sunday, and that means it's time to give the teams their theming due. Only one team may walk outta Texas with a ring, but both teams and their fans can deck their phones in these simple, sporty...

5 essential apps to take Android theming beyond the launcher

23 Comments
Posted by Ara Wagoner on 3 Jan 2017 3:25 pm
I love to theme my launcher. Most of the theming we talk about here on Android Central takes place on the home screen, so theming the launcher is important. It is not, however, the only area of your phone you can theme. Even without system-wide themes on TouchWiz, Sense UI and the like, it's possible — nay, easy — to theme many parts of your phone. So, let's get our theme on!

Best launchers for theming

28 Comments
Posted by Ara Wagoner on 27 Dec 2016 1:07 pm
Customization is my favorite part of Android. Android provides us with so much freedom, allowing us to completely scrap the setup and the launcher that came with our phones and replace it with something that suit us more. Years ago, before I knew what Nova Launcher and icon packs were, I was trying to make my phone look less blockish and boring. Our phones hold our lives — shouldn't they hold...

Pixel Plus: How to make your phone look like a Pixel (and better)

131 Comments
Posted by Ara Wagoner on 19 Nov 2016 3:00 pm
There's a lot of beauty in Google's shiny new Pixel, and that extends to the Pixel Launcher. The clean lines of the redesigned Google widget atop the screen, the whimsical portholes for folder icons, the faint white bar behind the dock … Google did a lot of interesting things with its new launcher layout, and while I'm all for the Pixel look, let's face it: not all of us have 800 bucks for a...

5 reasons I keep coming back to Nova Launcher

89 Comments
Posted by Ara Wagoner on 14 Nov 2016 9:00 am
I've used a lot of launchers over the years, but my first is still my favorite. I was a Nova Launcher fan before I was an Android enthusiast, and the launcher has only gotten better over the years. Nova is a wonderful launcher for users at any level. Sure, I've spent my fair share of time on Action Launcher, Apex Launcher, and so many others trying to find what made my home screen the best it...

Halloween home screen theme roundup

6 Comments
Posted by Ara Wagoner on 31 Oct 2016 10:00 am
This is Halloween! This is Halloween! Smartphones scream in the dead of night! This is Halloween, everybody pick a theme! Trick or treat till the app is gonna crash in fright! You've probably got a costume for tonight, right? Well, do you have one for your phone? You don't want to leave your most important device out of the fun, do you? Especially when you can make your Android phone look...

What you need to know about dark themes and battery savings

76 Comments
Posted by Ara Wagoner on 6 Sep 2016 8:00 am
Dark is beautiful. I've said this for years: Every time I have any support interaction with Google Play Music, I conclude the conversation asking about the return of that glorious dark theme. Dark themes in apps can be awesome, but dark themes for your home screen can be pure perfection. If you're using an AMOLED phone, dark themes can be energy-efficient as well as gorgeous — but only in very...

Be the very best with these custom Pokémon Go themes for Android

47 Comments
Posted by Ara Wagoner on 9 Aug 2016 7:00 am
'I wanna theme the very best, like no one ever was…' It's likely you care more about catching that Dratini the next street over than giving your home screen some team pride, but that's OK! I have scoured the internet to come up with wonderful themes for each of the teams in Pokémon Go, so that you can show your pride each time you unlock your phone to check if your gym is still standing.

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