The latest releases of CyanogenMod (CM6 ) contain some really great features. One of those features is the ability to tweak the user interface to your liking. You can find this feature by going to Menu–Settings–CyanogenMod Settings–User Interface. From this location you can tweak your notification bar and notification shade.
One drawback is that it is difficult to know what to tweak to get each effect. And, most of the tweaks require a reboot to take effect. This can result in a lot of trial and error. Well, we at Absolutely Android took on that trial and error (and trial and error and trial and……) so that you will know what each of the elements that you tweak are
One may ask, “Why tweak these elements at all?” Simple answer - “Because we can, it is an android phone after all!”. A not so simple answer is to really make it our phone. I try all kinds of themes, and there are a lot of them out there. Some are great, some I don’t care for and some just need a little tweak. CyanogenMod settings allows us to make those tweaks.
Here are the User Interface tweaks that are currently included;
| Power Prompt | Lets you skip the confirmation prompt on power off. |
| Render Effect | Modifies the screen color. Similar to an overlay where only certain colors are shown. This is meant to reduce power consumption. Neat effect. |
| Status Bar Tweaks | |
| Battery Percentage | Check to show battery percentage inside battery icon |
| Battery % Color | Select Color of text for battery color |
| Show Clock | Check to show clock in status bar |
| Clock Color | Select Color of text for Clock |
| Show AM/PM | Check to show AM or PM when using 12 hour clock. |
| Show dBm | Show signal strength |
| dBm Color | Select color of text in signal strength |
| Date and Provider Tweaks | |
| Date Color | Select color of text in Date |
| Display PLMN (lockscreen) | Check to show PLMN in lockscreen |
| Display PLMN (status bar) | Check to show PLMN in status bar |
| Carrier PLMN label Color | Select color of text in PLMN label |
| Display SPN (lockscreen) | Check to show SPN in lockscreen |
| Display SPN (status bar) | Check to show SPN in status bar |
| Carrier SPN label color | Select color of text in SPN label |
| Notifications Color Tweaks | |
| Notification ticker color | Select the colors of these elements individually |
| Notification count color | |
| No Notification title | |
| Clear notification label color | |
| Ongoing Notifications color | |
| Latest notifications title color | |
| Items title color | |
| Items text color | |
| Items time color | |
| Custom Notification bar | Check to use a custom color for notification bar |
| Bar Color | Select color of notification bar |
Notes:
PLMN = Public Land Mobile Network, SPN = Service Provider Name. My screen shows only T-Mobile as the PLMN with no SPN displayed.
Below is a graphic that shows what elements of the Notification /Status Bar and Notification Shade. This should help identify those elements that you would like to change.
The color of the status bar can be modified as well. However, the transparency of the bar cannot be modified.
When changing the colors you can do this with one of two methods. Both of these are with the color selector. One method is to use your finger to move around the color picker dial until you get a color that you like. You can also select the Alpha level. This alpha level is how transparent the color is. With the alpha bar fully to the right, the color has no transparency and is fully transparent when fully at the left.
The second method is to type in the color code. You can see what the color code is when modifying it with the color wheel. You can copy this value an apply it to other elements or you can directly type a value into it. It is outside the scope of this tutorial to describe completely how the color numbers work. But, here are some common values (in each of these the first two values after the # hash tag are ff, this means not transparent.)
#ff000000 = Black; #ffff0000 = Red; #ff0000ff = Blue; #ff00ff00 = Green; #ffffffff = White
For additional information about the coloring, here is a good source.
All of this information can be saved and exported to an XML file so that you can store you customization on your SD card so that it can be reapplied at any time.
Hopefully this will help you to make your android phone absolutely yours by making it uniquely you. Let us know in the comments.
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July 29th, 2010 → 9:00 am - Written By Gary LaTraille
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