How To Customize Android

I'm going to break down this video into sections first we're going to talk about the simple ways to customize android next we'll talk about custom launchers widgets and wallpapers and lastly we'll talk about UI theming using root 

So most mainstream manufacturers include a couple of theming options inside their smartphones the most common being the ability to change the home screen grid as well as the icons for this example I'll be using the Oneplus 9 pro so if you press and hold down anywhere on the home screen this will bring up a couple of menus here you can change the wallpaper and the widgets but most likely you'll see another option that says home settings if you click into that you can now change things like the launcher layout quick search gestures and quick settings inside the home screen layout menu you can change the grid size icon size and whether or not the icons have names but my favorite option by far here is the icon pack now the one I'm using right now is called Enix but you can download any number of free and paid icon packs and then change your icons right in this setting now depending on what phone you have there might be options within the settings to customize your device 

Even further on the Oneplus 9 pro you can click into the customization tab and change things like your default accent color the icon shape ambient display fingerprint animation horizon light and even the font but Oneplus might be a bit of an outlier when it comes to these customization options so for those of you who don't have those settings there are a few hidden options that might let you customize your device one of my favorite ways to customize your android phone is in display scaling what this does is basically change the amount of content you can see at your device at once sometimes this is referred to as font size and other times it's just display scaling and sometimes in the case of the Oneplus 9 pro it's both you can usually find this setting inside the accessibility tab on most phones here you can change the font size and make it larger or smaller depending on your needs but if you're one of those unlucky folks who doesn't have any options to change this you can actually get a similar effect inside developer options 

Now I'm sure many of you guys already know this but if you click the build number seven times the developer options will unlock there's a ton of stuff you can do in here but if you don't know what you're doing don't change anything as you can seriously mess up your phone if you scroll all the way down towards the bottom you can see something called smallest width and a number under it make note of this number as this is your default scaling number and if you want to change it back you're going to need the original number now what this number does is basically change the amount of dots per inch or dpi the phone recognizes your display has horizontally basically the higher the number this goes the smaller the content will appear on your display because the phone thinks there's more screen real estate to make use of in some cases this will mean apps won't display properly but for the most part this is an easy way to get more content showing on your device lastly if we stay inside developer settings you can also change the animation scale which is basically how slow or fast animations appear on your screen you can change the scale to be lower which will make animations appear faster and could make your phone feel a bit snappier of course your level of customization success is going to largely depend on your manufacturer which means if you truly want to be free of this you'll need some third-party options to customize your phone which brings us to the next section 

Custom launchers back in the day custom launchers were all the rage especially considering that stock launchers didn't offer nearly the amount of customization options they do today a few of my current favorites are lawn chair 2 and Niagara launcher lawn chair 2 is great for those who want a pixel-like experience without any of the complicated menus that other launchers are met with Niagara launcher on the other hand gives a really completely different experience from your standard android launcher it's focused on giving you a clean and minimal presentation of all of your apps and this will be really great for those minimalists out there but my absolute favorite launcher that has stood the test of time is nova launcher nova launcher in my opinion gives you the most amount of options to customize your home screen and truly lets you create some really impressive setups now I won't be going into too much depth with this as there's just too many settings to cover here but nova launcher lets you change things like your icon size icon pack home screen grid options animation speeds page animations gestures notification badges the list goes on and on seriously if you've never tried nova launcher you're missing out one drawback of nova launcher is the absence of the google discover feed page fortunately you can sideload from nova's website the nova google companion which gives you the google discover feed on the leftmost home screen the great thing about third-party launchers is that if you decide you're bored of your current one you can always download another one and give it a try it really does open up a world of customization to those who are willing to go for it now 

Next up let's talk widgets I'm not going to bore you guys with how widgets work you guys obviously know what they do and they've been around forever now today we're going to talk about a few of my favorite widget packs that makes customizing your phone that much easier the first one I want to talk about is custom widget or kwgt kwgt is a what you see is what you get widget that basically lets you build out your own custom widgets say that five times fast to get started hold down anywhere on the home screen to bring up a widget panel from here you can scroll down to custom widget and select what size i find that 4x2 usually works best depending on your screen size once you've added the widget you'll notice it says click to setup or long press to resize again this is really straightforward at first you're going to see kgwt's own base pack these widgets are okay and can give you a decent starting point if you're looking to create your own widgets however personally this has never really appealed to me because i didn't feel like putting the time and effort into building my own but thankfully there are plenty of other widget packs that you can download that will give you beautiful pre-made widgets a few of my favorites are shadow kwgt which gives you a really beautiful new morphic design widgets that go great with light or dark backgrounds the nexus titan kwgt which consists of some really simple and beautiful glass window like widgets can make for some really clean setups flo kwgt is also a great and simple widget pack that focuses on white and transparent widgets this pack also goes great with dark wallpapers and lastly minimal kwgt which is as title says minimal the point is kwgt offers a ton of creative ways to set up your home screen and there are even some widget packs that let you display the amount of storage and ram or other related system info on your home screen you might have to enable permissions for the widget but again that depends on what widget you choose to use 

Lastly if you want to change something about a specific widget you can and there's even an option to back up your widgets inside kwgt which is really helpful if you want to change setups on the fly still for those of you who can't be bothered there's an even simpler way to get pre-made setups using something called klwp or custom wallpaper upon first opening custom wallpaper you'll notice that it looks very similar in design the custom widget and that's because they're both created by the same developer instead of customizing widgets however klwp lets you customize an entire home screen setup the gimmick here is that you're basically creating an interactive live wallpaper that once set access your home screen in order for this to work you'll have to use a third-party launcher such as nova launcher that lets you fully remove everything on the home screen there are several custom klwp packs that you can download from the play store a few of my favorites are materialized home wavy and chameleon the great thing about klwp is that you can really customize it for any setup and there are just so many options to make use of 

Now wallpapers can also make a really big difference when it comes to customizing your android device one app to try is called tap it tap it auto generates wallpapers based on your screen resolution however these wallpapers aren't downloaded from anywhere rather they're created and using an AI you can also set these wallpapers to randomly change based on the hour or the day another great option is backdrops I've been personally using backdrops for years as they have an always updated list of really nice minimal and material design wallpapers now this is sort of a bonus app but creating a home screen setup can be an in-depth process so for those of you who are looking for some inspiration there's an app called pro screens that lets you see the various different home screen setups that other people have made clicking on the specific home screen gives you all the necessary information on what widgets and apps were used to create that setup and can be super helpful when trying to create your own customized setup 

Now up until now all the theming we've talked about can be done right out of the box on any android phone but for those of you who want to fully theme your entire UI you're going to need to root your device it should go without saying but you should be very cautious about rooting your phone especially if you don't know what you're doing although it will give you full disk access to your device of choice it can sometimes be more unsecure avoid your manufacturer's warranty and even potentially brick your smartphone so just make sure you've done all the research before going forward okay with that disclaimer out of the way rooting your device can open up a world of possibilities when it comes to customization honestly the list is far too large to cover in one blog so if you're interested in learning more about rooting your device and route specific features make sure to let me know down below anyways for today we're going to be covering device-wide UI theming using something called substratum or substratum I'm not entirely sure how to say it back in the glory days of android there was a custom rom commonly known as cyanogen MoD 

Cyanogen MoD has a theming option that you substratum to let you fully change the entire look of your eye even down to the boot of animation several years later substratum theme engine was released on the google play store and it does pretty much the exact same thing substratum lets you customize almost every aspect of your android phone from the color of the UI to the quick setting tiles to even your boot animation my personal favorite substratum theme is flux which provides a really clean looking dark and light mode across the entire UI there are a few caveats to substratum theming before you install anything it's highly recommended that you make a backup of your device using a custom recovery like TWRP that way if you end up breaking your device you can always boot back into the recovery and restore your phone to the way it was before also you may have limited success with substratum and the app can be confusing if the particular theme you're trying to install doesn't work or may not be compatible with your OS or your particular device it's always a good idea to do some research beforehand I also should mention that there is another theme engine called swift installer that does pretty much the same thing as substratum but is a little bit more streamlined and straightforward it's more focused on changing individual aspects of the UI but some users have had more issues with it than substratum so just keep that in mind and 

That pretty much does it like I said with root access there are tons upon tons of apps that let you customize almost every aspect of your device apps like titanium backup lets you uninstall bloatware and make backup of your apps other apps like magic's module lets you install modules that you can customize your system files and lets you customize your device even further still without root there are plenty of other options to get you started customizing your android phone and if anything it might be better than rooting your phone in some cases either way you've got some options well that's going to wrap it up for this Blog let me know down below what your favorite method of customization is and why lastly feel free to ask me any tech related questions or comments and I'll be sure to read them or answer them at the end of the next Blog!