[solved] Using White Color For App Icon Background Instead Of Black


Leo Knight

Members
Dec 15, 2017
10
15
Hi.
Is there a way to change app icon background color from black to white?
It's white in miui.com ROMs. But it's black in xiaomi.eu ROMs. Why??
I know changing app icon from Themes (such as using Limitless) can fix this, but I hate the Limitless theme!
If it's possible by flashing a file or something please let me know.
 
I figured it out myself!

Steps:
1. Download the official ROM (recovery not fastboot).
2. Extract the .zip archive using UR Tool:
https://forum.xda-developers.com/ch...l-extract-repack-dat-img-android-5-8-t3670763
3. Following this guide:
http://en.miui.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=529089&highlight=default+icons
All you have to do is
a. copy the file icons from /system/media/theme/default/ after extracting the ROM.
b. paste it into your device memory,
c. reboot into TWRP recovery, go to Mount and check "system" and uncheck "read-only" at bottom, then press the Home button
d. go to Advaced>File Manager, then locate the icons file in your /sdcard directory, tap on it, then select copy.
e. navigate to /system/media/theme/default/ and paste the file here.
f. Boot into system, launch Themes and reapply the theme (or just the icons).

Done!

Also, if you don't like any of the custom icons, delete them from this directory:
/system/media/theme/miui_mod_icons
Note: don't delete files starting with com.miui or com.xiaomi!
 
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You did that without root?

I hate dark backgrounds on Xiaomi.eu themes. And this is actually a bug since I believe ROMs for different models have different settings. For example, Mi4 had the white background, but when I switched to Note 4, it becomes dark blue.
 
BTW, I believe it's xiaomi.eu default theme fault. It should be setting inside theme somewhere... Need to investigate somehow...
 
@Trou Macacq
Yes, without root! But you need TWRP or some other custom recovery. (which I assume you already have since you installed a xiaomi.eu ROM!)
 
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Ok, I actually failed to achieve needed result via instructions. I wanted to have a white background, not transparent or any other. The transparent background will make all icons look like they have different sizes, which is inconsistent for me. I also didn't want to replace the whole file, because wanted to understand what is wrong with EU ROM.

I extracted icons file from original MIUI and compared with Xioami.eu one. And it indeed different in the following manner:

EU ROM has icon_pattern.png file in subfolders (res\drawable-hdpi, res\drawable-nxhdpi, res\drawable-xhdpi, res\drawable-xxhdpi, and res\drawable-xxxhdpi) and this file is fully transperent.

While the original ROM has it only in res\drawable-xxhdpi folder and its white rectangle with rounded edges. I made all folders look the same on both ROMs, copied, rebooted. And it worked!!!

FINALLY!!! I was suffering every single time when I saw these ugly icons.

The question is, what will happen during a weekly upgrade?

Can we somehow include that fix to Xiaomi.eu ROM?
 
Did you follow the instructions on this page or the one I linked from miui.com? Note that all you had to do was copy a file named icons. That's all I did.

Anyway I'm glad you worked it out!

You have to repeat the process after every update I'm afraid.
 
So far I ended up updating standard icons of applications that looks ugly. Kind of more work, but they will not get lost after upgrade, and UI most consistent, since replacing dark background with the white one, or transperent one don't give same result as carefully updating each icon.

Luckly I had not many of them.
 
@IvanPayne you can use solution as @Leo Knight described — update icons file from standard ROM.

Or if you don't want to download and unpack standard ROM, you can do thing that I have described — update existing icons file. I can share with you icon_pattern.png file.

The problem of these two approaches that all changes will disappear after OTA. I'm currently trying to check third approach — put custom icons to miui_mod_icons folder. So far working great. I hope it won't get overwritten after OTA, since these files does not exist in the ROM.

I'm using following approach — download APK file, then locate the main icon there, correct background there, and then save under correct name to miui_mod_icons folder and reapply theme. Icons get updated.

You can do it yourself, or if it's not that many icons, I can help you. I'm not a fancy artist, but it's not the rocket science either. Updating icons to keep consistent look does not require much of the talent.

I have contacted @ingbrzy to include my custom icons to the ROM. Maybe you can also ping him to show that problem indeed exists and we should not ignore it. Let me emphasize again: standard ROM has a white background for all non-standard icons. Which is definitely far better choice than the dark one.

Here is how the result of my approach looks like:

before:

before.jpg

after:

after.jpg
 
Bad news. My manual fix (custom icons) disappeared after OTA too.

So we don't have sustainable fix still.
 
Hi,

With MIUI 10, this workaround doesn't work anymore: default theme has the ugly Limitless icons. The old Default theme is now called Classic, but has white background (in Global, no background at all). So now we should do this operation over Classic theme and not over Default theme.

Does anyone know where I can replace 'icons' file for Classic theme?