Instructions

[TwiztedWisard]

Hey,

This is not really an issue but I came from your earlier post on reddit and just wanted to say awesome job!

Unfortunately i cant find the post again And wanted to ask if you could put instructions on github for installing everything in the right place?

I'm being a dumbA no doubt but I couldn't seem to get the icons to work, there appears to be no way to import them from the icon pack you link to. (Using win 95 theme)

Again, awesome job but if you could help an ancient dumbA out I'd be ever so grateful :D

[SpitFire-666]

hey there!

can you try this, once instructions are confirmed OK then I'll add them to the page

1. Install Lawnchair
2. Download a .shed file from my github and open it with Lawnchair
3. Download the appropriate font file (.ttf) then set it as Global Font in Lawnchair (Theme, Fonts, Change, Add Fonts etc)

That should be it!

[TwiztedWisard]

Thank you! it worked that time and most of the missing icons i have are due to not having the app installed...can i ask, when you swipe up to the apps page, they are still showing up as the default samsung ones...is this intentional and should i just be using the themed home screen to launch?

[SpitFire-666]

Nice. Yeah the home page icons only show up if you have the exact app installed which is annoying.

Ideally I need to make icon "packs" that so you can customise your own home screen. Can you try my Win3.1 icons? https://github.com/SpitFire-666/AndroidThemes/blob/main/Win31/Win31Icons.zip

It's best to customise your icons in the apps page first, then the change will show up on the homescreen too. I must've been lazy/to focused on the home screen and ignored the apps page 🤷‍♂️

BTW I added an instructions section in the readme - hopefully that helps

[TwiztedWisard]

Well, after creating a project like this i wouldn't call you lazy!

~~ am in the processs of testing 3.1 but the backup file for lawnchair seems to be in the wrong format. its in a .novabackup file rather than the expected .shed and lawnchair is having a tantrum when I try to import it.~~ Ignore this is had an old repo..DOH!

I was also looking in to creating icon packs for you but the recommended process doesn't work on my phone so currently looking for a way to do this via PC :)

PS: The instructions look great!

[TwiztedWisard]

3.1 I have now tested (Samsung A56 5G) however, I can see you have put a lot of time in to selecting the appropriate icons for each app but android is doing you dirty in the fact that if the app is not already installed and you install it, it will revert to the default app icon. Easilly fixed through the customize option but it seems a shame its not retaining your original choices.

[SpitFire-666]

Cheers, sounds like we're getting somewhere now 👍 I deleted the novabackup file since it's not relevant anymore.

From what I can see, icon packs need to be compiled into APKs which really ruins the fun. If you find an easy, repeatable way to create some, let me know 👍

[TwiztedWisard]

Definitely! And yes that's the only way I could see that lawnchair would accept them. There is a way using icon pack studio2 but to use the playstore version of the app, it needs to use smart launcher. They have an apk on their website that "supposedly" allows you to do it on other launchers but when I installed it, it gave me the "smart launcher required" error. There is one thing I havent tried with this method so I will give that a go...

...failing that, its time to get comfortable with android studio i guess. I'm from more of a cybersec background than development, especially from an android point of view but its all Linux right? 🤣...I have it installed so ill take a look.

[SpitFire-666]

Hey good tip. so I got Ion Pack Studio installed but for the life of me i can't figure out how to use/import an image 🤦‍♂️

[TwiztedWisard]

Hey, so i ran in to the same issue...on further study, its not possible to import png files. Bit of an oversight by the dev if you ask me but thats by the by. I switched to the android studio method using Jahirfiqutiva's blueprint template It wasn't as complex as I thought and I seemed to have had some success! I have managed to build an apk and apply it through lawnchair but there are a couple of caveats:

• some of the icons haven't mapped - this is due to me coding the wrong application paths so an easy fix (once I find them lol).

• The shortcuts you have included on the home screen in your backup are for non-standard apps and the majority of them I couldn't download as they are not available in my country (UK) :(

• Some Icons chosen by you I couldn't seem to find in the icons folder (win95) so I picked the nearest ones (and took some creative liberties, I hope you don't mind - For Ex: replaced the browser icon with the more recognisable internet explorer 'e' and moved the old one to the google app. Reddit uses RegEdit icon as a little play on words etc.)

• Some Icons look a bit too zoomed in (I think this may be due to the resolution of the icon I selected, I chose the 32x32 version for all but this may not be appropriate for all) inversely, the 'browser' icon looks small but the res is stupidly high (1024x1024) I'm not to sure on how icons work in that respect so I may just be dumb lol.

So, as a proof of concept, I stuck with the most common apps (Google, Samsung, Social Medias and a number of most commonly used apps). I have an APK I can send to you so you can test it your end? I've not really used git from a developers perspective so not sure how to initiate that.

I have a couple of months with a lot of free time so if you are happy with what I've done so far, I am more than happy to continue working on it for you and updating the app list to include all the apps you originally intended (and some)? To do this I would need you to send me a list of the activity locations (com.[APP_NAME].something/com.[APP_NAME].SomeActivity) from your chosen apps but this info is easy to obtain using apps from the playstore like 'Activity Launcher' or 'Package Names'. I would also need the file names of the icons you wish to use.

Or if you would prefer to continue yourself with what I've done so far, I can send you the whole android studio project?

Let me know your thoughts :)

C

[TwiztedWisard]

[SpitFire-666]

OK you're officially more determined than me lol, I'll definitely try the APK!

• I've updated the icon pack (https://github.com/SpitFire-666/AndroidThemes/blob/main/Win95/Win95Icons.zip) , and added the IE4 icon, you could use the old IE icon for Google now 😁
• I added a bunch of other interesting icons to the zip as well, hope they'll help cover more use cases
• Win95 icons seem to be 32x32, but I've seen the odd 48x48. I'll try to make sure all are 32x32
• Love the copilot icon 👍
• I'll have to upload my MS Office 95 icons as well, that will round out the look nicely
• Ideally the .shed templates would be setup with apps most people use - I'm not most people, and the .shed files were more of a demo/PoC. It would be nice if Android understood app categories (does it?), like browser, email, phone apps and applied the "most likely" icon

BTW, if you set the text to white, it will be more authentic win95 👍

[TwiztedWisard]

Honestly, I've been having way too much fun with it! Thank you for allowing me be involved 😁 Fair warning, wall of text incoming lol...

• I have updated the IE icon for your selection (it is a much better version than mine!)
• The additions look great, I can defo see where they could be used but I will take my direction from you on that going forward. It's your design after all :)
• Don't worry too much about the resolutions, I think it was more of a me thing than an issue with them. They don't look as zoomed in as they did on my first build.
• Ahh, thanks...it defo seemed the most appropriate lol.
• I was on the look-out for them, but yes, they would work very well, especially now MS have released the office programs for android. (if you wish to use them for that of course)
• This one stumped me a bit as it would be so much easier if we could define them in that way. I've looked in to it and unfortunately, I do have to hard code the full app paths for as many apps as you wish to include (Again, more than happy to do this). The up side to this is I only have to do it once, then its a case of changing the icon reference for each operating system, which takes no time at all.

I have set up the icon packs as a seperate repo (https://github.com/TwiztedWisard/RetroDroid_Icons). This will allow you to pull it in to your project and build them yourself if you so wish (2 mouse clicks, but android studio is required.) You can then upload them under 'Releases' so your users aren't trekking all over github for stuff but feel free to link the repo if you would prefer to do it that way.

The repo is currently private as we are still working out the kinks but I have added you as a contributor so that should give you access to the test APK's under 'Releases', let me know if you have any issues accessing it. As the test packages are not signed, you will likely get a warning but this can be ignored for now and click 'install anyway'.

I have acredited you for the most part and I have added a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 License. This means people can pretty much do what they like with the icon packs (including you) but they cannot profit from them in any way (if this is something you would like to do I can give exclusive permisisons, I will not sell the packs unless it is something we both agree on at a later date). I had to inherit the CC-BY-SA 4.0 from the blueprint project I used but I added the NC (Non-Commercial) clause as I didn't want others profiteering from our hard work! Feel free to copy and paste the LICENSE.md in to your own project as its just a github template. (apologies if i'm over explaining, I just wanted to make sure my intentions were clear 😁)

From my perspective, all I need to do now is add as many hardcoded app paths and link them to the appropriate icons. All I would need from you is a list of the icons you wish to use, and for what app you would like them to be used on.

An easy way to do this would be to rename the icons you upload to your repo using the following naming convention: [APPNAME]_win98 obvs changing the suffix depending on what OS the icons are for. Icon names should be all lower case, with underscores ( _ ) for spaces. Don't worry about the win95 ones as I have already done this as part of our PoC. The Windows suffixes i have used so far are: _win31, _win95, _win98, _win2k, _winXP and _win7 (XP is in capitals intentionally).

Another really helpful thing would be to ask as many android users you know, to download the free app called 'Package Names' and asking them to copy the locations (both user apps and system apps) this will help us cover all use cases of things like 'Camera' and 'Contacts' as they will have different locations depending on manufacturer.

Hope this is all in order but if you would like to change anything just let me know :)

PS Good call on the font colour ;)
PPS: Where, on this blue marble we call home, are you based bud?

[SpitFire-666]

OK lots to think about here, in the meantime, here's the MS Office 95 icons. I haven't properly sorted them yet - enjoy

Also, i took a stab at making a win95 FUTO keyboard theme. It's awful but "authentic"🙃

[TwiztedWisard]

Yeah I seem to be on one with it but take your time friend :D

Awful, but authentic. its a great tag line! 🤣

Thanks for the icons. I've managed to find quite a lot of the apps you had in the shed file too so i'm testing a build now. Theres 2 in the repo so check it out when you have free time :)

[SpitFire-666]

Alrighty then! I took your icon pack apk for a spin and it's legit! I wasn't expecting to see Categories - this is a game changer!

Only thing is the icons are really small for me:

So some thoughts about the overall project - I'm pretty stoked with where it is so far 👍 I'd still like to make more themes (old school MacOS, PalmOS, Windows Mobile, Casio organiser, GameBoy, OS/2 would be nice 😁 )

I'm happy for you to collab and expand on all of this - I can keep supplying the icons, wallpapers, fonts etc as I've got the virtual machines, software, tools, and stuff handy. Let me know what you need and I can try hooking you up. I've even got some boot screen .gifs that could be fun