Homebrew Share and Download custom Wii U Themes

[MikaDubbz]

6/9/22 Update: New Theme added - Purple & Lime

1/1/22 Update: This was always possible, but only now do I realize, we can have a Theme Manager! It's just SDCafiine, but it functions just like a Theme Manager, check out the info near the bottom of this post for more!

9/10 UPDATES: Wii U Blue Theme added! Nintendo Red Theme Added! All dark themes updated with USB and Swap Display icons that fit the themes better! Check them all out below!!

9/7/21 UPDATE: Watermelon Theme has now been added, check it out below!

User @Fangal_Airbag has made 2 themes of their own, a dark theme more in line with the old dark mod plugin, and one based on Pretendo's color scheme (This is the most intricate theme yet, with color changes to the switch account menu and some font color changes). These can be found on Page 9 HERE

9/2/21 UPDATES: Pink and Black and Photo Negative Themes have now been added, check them out below!

8/16 - 8/25/21 UPDATES:
Dark theme - Orange has now been added, check it out below!
Dark theme - White has now been added, check it out below!
Dark theme - Yellow has now been added, check it out below!
Dark theme - Pink has now been added, check it out below!
Dark theme - Lime Green has now been added, check it out below!
Fourth theme created - Dark Theme Red, scroll to the bottom of this post to check out and download
Second and Third themes created - Dark Theme Purple and Dark Theme Light Blue, scroll to bottom of this post to check them out and download

ORIGINAL POST:
So this can be a thing now, how exciting is that? Thanks to @CafeCentralUI and his thread here: https://gbatemp.net/threads/released-rosalina-theme-installer-for-wii-u.588203/ the information is now out there on what files need to be altered to create our own themes on the Wii U. While his thread isn't so much a tutorial as it is a guiding hand on where to look to create themes, there was enough info there for me to make a pretty cool theme for my Wii U, not only do I want to show it off, but I wanna share it so that you can download and use it too, and hopefully in time more and more themes can be added and shared in this thread, for example I may do a proper dark theme next if someone else doesn't do it themselves. I recognize that without a proper guide telling you which parts you want to edit and in what way to alter whatever parts of the Wii U menu, there probably wont be a lot of people trying this yet, but if I see enough demand, I could be the one to make a proper tutorial on what info is where (it's all scattered in so many places, that going back to recall what is where sounds like a nightmare).

Regardless, here's my first theme, I call it Vaporwave Summer:

(if you're curious about repopulating the Wara Wara Plaza, find my thread on how to do so)

Another look at the bottom to show the minor changes I made to the folder creation tiles:

Now, before I provide the download link I just want to say, that if doing anything to the Wii U system files scares you, then you probably should only use this in SDCafiine, taking the included Men.pack and Men2.pack files and putting them in the following location:

US: sdcafiine/0005001010040100/content/Common/Package/
EU: sdcafiine/0005001010040200/content/Common/Package/
JPN: sdcafiine/0005001010040000/content/Common/Package/

You can install themes permanently via FTP, just as you can for custom Wara Wara Plazas (see my sig for more info). But when first I tried this with FTP, it yielded issues, issues that scared me for a moment that I may have had a brick (thankfully it wasn't a complete brick thanks to having a coldboot CFW and I was able to recover, but not without a few minutes of fearing I had lost everything), it could just be my FTP client on the computer, but whatever it is, I felt lucky that I was able to get back to the standard menu theme without issue. After gaining some courage, I tried again, and was able to yield some positive results:

GOING PERMANENT EDIT: You can go permanent, but I had to kinda cheese the ftp client by hitting overwrite like 3 times before hitting skip when transferring the file for each file to properly transfer. Go permanent at your own risk, you can read in detail what I went through to make it happen. Others had no issue though so it may just be the ftp client on my PC that was the issue. I don't know. Regardless, PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT IF YOU DON'T HAVE A COLDBOOT CFW INSTALLED (CBHC OR TIRAMISU), YOU CAN EASILY BRICK DOING THIS, BUT CBHC OR TIRAMISU CAN AND WILL SAVE YOU FROM THIS KIND OF BRICK (it saved me)

SAFER PERMANENT THEME INSTALLATION ALTERNATIVES TO FTP: For a safer means less liable to lead to any bricks, use the Rosalina Theme Installer or Theme Manager instead. As long as you have a coldboot CFW, then the risk of any real permanent bricks has been all but eliminated.

Download the Vaporwave Summer Theme HERE

Dark Theme - Purple

Download Dark Theme - Purple HERE

Dark Theme - Blue

Download Dark Theme - Blue HERE

Dark Theme - Red

Download Dark Theme - Red HERE

Dark Theme - Lime Green

Download Dark Theme - Lime Green HERE

Dark Theme - Pink

Download Dark Theme - Pink HERE

Dark Theme - Yellow

Download Dark Theme - Yellow HERE

Dark Theme - White

Download Dark Theme - White HERE

Dark Theme - Orange

Download Dark Theme - Orange HERE

Photo Negative Theme

Download the Photo Negative Theme HERE

Pink and Black Theme

Download the Pink and Black Theme HERE

Watermelon Theme

Download the Watermelon Theme HERE

Wii U Blue Theme

Download the Wii U Blue Theme HERE

Nintendo Red Theme

Download the Nintendo Red Theme HERE

Purple & Lime Theme

Download the Purple & Lime Theme HERE

A Theme Manager would be pretty cool...
Well you can essentially have one by making each theme a separate 'modpack' folder for the Wii U menu inside your SDCafiine folder, then any time you launch SDCafiine, you essentially pull up a theme loader like so:

Please let me know if you have any questions further on setting this up.

HOW CAN I MAKE ONE?!
I have a rough spreadsheet I've been working from that makes it clear to me what I need to do, though it's not the most thoroughly explained at this point.

I'll share it here: Men.pack and Men2.pack feature locations

And if anyone wants to take a stab at their own theme with that info, have at it. I do intend to make it a bit more clear in the future, but it should be enough info for anyone to figure out what I was doing.


Finally, I'm receiving word that others are making a tutorial for making and installing themes. That's cool, of course, as is the case for anything like this on GBATemp, always use caution following a video guide, and if something goes wrong following someone else's guide, please don't blame me, I would still recommend looking through my info here and throughout this thread for help first.

 

[XDeltaOne]

So this can be a thing now, how exciting is that? Thanks to @CafeCentralUI and his thread here: https://gbatemp.net/threads/released-rosalina-theme-installer-for-wii-u.588203/ the information is now out there on what files need to be altered to create our own themes on the Wii U. While his thread isn't so much a tutorial as it is a guiding hand on where to look to create themes, there was enough info there for me to make a pretty cool theme for my Wii U, not only do I want to show it off, but I wanna share it so that you can download and use it too, and hopefully in time more and more themes can be added and shared in this thread, for example I may do a proper dark theme next if someone else doesn't do it themselves. I recognize that without a proper guide telling you which parts you want to edit and in what way to alter whatever parts of the Wii U menu, there probably wont be a lot of people trying this yet, but if I see enough demand, I could be the one to make a proper tutorial on what info is where (it's all scattered in so many places, that going back to recall what is where sounds like a nightmare).

Regardless, here's my first theme, I call it Vaporwave Summer:

(if you're curious about repopulating the Wara Wara Plaza, find my thread on how to do so)

Another look at the bottom to show the minor changes I made to the folder creation tiles:

Now, before I provide the download link I just want to say, that for now, you should probably only use this in SDCafiine, taking the included Men.pack and Men2.pack files and putting them in the following location:

US: sdcafiine/0005001010040100/content/Common/Package/
EU: sdcafiine/0005001010040200/content/Common/Package/
JPN: sdcafiine/0005001010040000/content/Common/Package/

Theoretically this should be able to be implemented via FTPiiU as a permanent theme, and I've had no issue overwriting the Wara Wara Plaza on a permanent level before. But I tried this and it yielded issues, issues that scared me for a moment that I may have had a brick (thankfully it wasn't and I was able to recover, but not without a few minutes of fearing I had lost everything), it could just be my FTP client on the computer, but whatever it is, I feel lucky that I was able to get back to the standard menu theme without issue. Perhaps I'll try again later, since I was able to recover I think I know what it would take to properly overwrite without failure, but I'm incredibly hesitant to do so. Point is, seriously beware if you're gonna try and make a theme permanent, SDCafiine meanwhile is risk free and works like a charm.

@CafeCentralUI had created an installer for themes that should have worked to install such a theme without using FTPiiU, but the github page is down, he didn't seem aware that Men.pack has a lot of theme elements in addition to Men2.pack, so I don't know if his program would have even worked for both files to begin with, and he claimed it was made for indexiine, I imagine it could have worked on CBHC as well, but since the github is down, I suppose it's neither here nor there. For now, I say just enjoy in on SDCafiine.

Download the Vaporwave Summer Theme HERE

Nice!
Please can you make a dark Theme?

 

[godreborn]

did you try injecting the theme with the rosalina app? I've never tried this before, so I assume the method you used isn't permanent, thus it's safe.

 

[MikaDubbz]

did you try injecting the theme with the rosalina app? I've never tried this before, so I assume the method you used isn't permanent, thus it's safe.

As I mentioned, that app's github has been taken down, and I've never used it, plus the OP wasn't aware that men.pack had a lot of the theme elements too, so I fear that Rosalina was only programed for men2.pack.

So yeah I'm just doing this on SDCafiine for the time being, but I'd like to go permanent if I can. Like I said, FTPiiU gave me a scare with this one, but I thankfully I was able to recover.

 

[godreborn]

if you can get it to load the menu automatically, might try it with cbhc with it set as the homebrew launcher. that's what they have for the dark theme, but there were some bugs with it. for some reason, dkc tropical freeze -- the A button to start the game with the pro controller doesn't work unless you press home and go back into the game. the gamepad has no issues with this. also, I have a usb loader gx forwarder on the wii u side of the system, and it uses hbl2hbc, so if the homebrew launcher is missing, you'll get a black screen.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

it says that it's a mod of the indexiine installer, so it may only be able to backup and restore one thing at a time (index.html or in this case the menu pack 2 file). maybe the app's github was taken down, because something was wrong with it? I see that the op's github is still active, just the app's is gone. he did another indexiine installer mod, but for something else, not the menu pack.

 

[MikaDubbz]

if you can get it to load the menu automatically, might try it with cbhc with it set as the homebrew launcher. that's what they have for the dark theme, but there were some bugs with it. for some reason, dkc tropical freeze -- the A button to start the game with the pro controller doesn't work unless you press home and go back into the game. the gamepad has no issues with this. also, I have a usb loader gx forwarder on the wii u side of the system, and it uses hbl2hbc, so if the homebrew launcher is missing, you'll get a black screen.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

it says that it's a mod of the indexiine installer, so it may only be able to backup and restore one thing at a time (index.html or in this case the menu pack 2 file). maybe the app's github was taken down, because something was wrong with it? I see that the op's github is still active, just the app's is gone. he did another indexiine installer mod, but for something else, not the menu pack.

Yeah, my thought was he took down the app cuz there was an error with it. For the time being, if there is to be luck with this going permanent, I do think FTPiiU is the solution. However, I want to explain my harrowing experience with that and these files, it was both scary, but also relieving to the topic at hand:

So after I finalized this theme, I did try to go permanent via FTPiiU. I've transferred files to my Wii U this way many times without issue, even replacing another permanent file (the Wara Wara Plaza) without issue. So I start by trying to transfer men.pack, and it takes a while to transfer the 6MB file, and once it's seemingly done it asked if I wanted to overwrite or skip as if i was trying to transfer it again. I hit skip, and the FTP client claimed the slightly larger file was in the Wii U. So I exited, turned off the Wii U and turned it on again. The CBHC screen popped up (so I knew it wasn't bricked at that moment, cuz that screen straight up wont appear if you are truly bricked), but once it tried to get to the Wii U menu, it was just stuck on the white screen with the Wii U icon in the middle with the loading noise. I was scared now, but I restarted my Wii U, held A and the homebrew launcher thankfully popped up. Curious, I tried SDCafiine, and the menu would boot up with my theme no problem, so I wasn't truly bricked, but I still had to save my Wii U so it could properly boot up without SDCafiine.

So back to FTPiiU I went, and once I was in there, I saw that the men.Pack in the Wii U was actually smaller than the original copy. Just wanting to get my Wii U normal again, I tried to transfer the original men.pack back to the Wii U to the same result as before, I hit skip, left the folder and came back in and saw that the men.pack item was indeed smaller. I was starting to think that the full file straight up couldn't be transferred and I had lost my ability to boot into the menu without SDCafiine active. But I transferred men.pack again, and when it asked if I wanted to overwrite the file again, I said yes, and the process looped and did the same thing, upon being asked again I said yes, and after, it asked again, I said yes that time as well. After hitting yes 4 times, I hit skip on the next, left the folder and returned to see that the file was the correct size inside of the Wii U. So I turned off the Wii U, and turned it on again and thankfully it all was working.

So I learned a few things, most importantly, a failure here isn't a full brick as long as you have CBHC. It was very scary though all the same. Having said that, if I'm feeling daring later today, I will repeat this process of overwriting numerous times, except with the modded theme files, and if I find myself unable to get back to the Wii U menu, I am thankfully able to recover now.

 

[godreborn]

well, I hope you succeed. I may or may not try this. I have cbhc installed, so if something goes wrong, I should be able to fix it. I'll keep my eyes on this thread for whenever you do try it again. good luck.

 

[XDeltaOne]

Yeah, my thought was he took down the app cuz there was an error with it. For the time being, if there is to be luck with this going permanent, I do think FTPiiU is the solution. However, I want to explain my harrowing experience with that and these files, it was both scary, but also relieving to the topic at hand:

So after I finalized this theme, I did try to go permanent via FTPiiU. I've transferred files to my Wii U this way many times without issue, even replacing another permanent file (the Wara Wara Plaza) without issue. So I start by trying to transfer men.pack, and it takes a while to transfer the 6MB file, and once it's seemingly done it asked if I wanted to overwrite or skip as if i was trying to transfer it again. I hit skip, and the FTP client claimed the slightly larger file was in the Wii U. So I exited, turned off the Wii U and turned it on again. The CBHC screen popped up (so I knew it wasn't bricked at that moment, cuz that screen straight up wont appear if you are truly bricked), but once it tried to get to the Wii U menu, it was just stuck on the white screen with the Wii U icon in the middle with the loading noise. I was scared now, but I restarted my Wii U, held A and the homebrew launcher thankfully popped up. Curious, I tried SDCafiine, and the menu would boot up with my theme no problem, so I wasn't truly bricked, but I still had to save my Wii U so it could properly boot up without SDCafiine.

So back to FTPiiU I went, and once I was in there, I saw that the men.Pack in the Wii U was actually smaller than the original copy. Just wanting to get my Wii U normal again, I tried to transfer the original men.pack back to the Wii U to the same result as before, I hit skip, left the folder and came back in and saw that the men.pack item was indeed smaller. I was starting to think that the full file straight up couldn't be transferred and I had lost my ability to boot into the menu without SDCafiine active. But I transferred men.pack again, and when it asked if I wanted to overwrite the file again, I said yes, and the process looped and did the same thing, upon being asked again I said yes, and after, it asked again, I said yes that time as well. After hitting yes 4 times, I hit skip on the next, left the folder and returned to see that the file was the correct size inside of the Wii U. So I turned off the Wii U, and turned it on again and thankfully it all was working.

So I learned a few things, most importantly, a failure here isn't a full brick as long as you have CBHC. It was very scary though all the same. Having said that, if I'm feeling daring later today, I will repeat this process of overwriting numerous times, except with the modded theme files, and if I find myself unable to get back to the Wii U menu, I am thankfully able to recover now.

I tested it with Ftp from Laf111 and Windows 10 WinSCP and can say that it works without problems. Thanks to you guys for the theme. It's permanent now.

 

[godreborn]

I might try it if we can get a dark theme. maybe the files were truncated originally for some reason. I always have "overwrite if size differs" in filezilla, so it doesn't ask me to overwrite them. that's under the same option in settings though.

 

[MikaDubbz]

I tested it with Ftp from Laf111 and Windows 10 WinSCP and can say that it works without problems. Thanks to you guys for the theme. It's permanent now.

Fantastic, thanks for the update. I was not aware of FTP from Laf111, but looking it up now, and I can see this likely is the safer solution than FTPiiU

 

[godreborn]

I just downloaded it. does the install version require the app be on the sd card as well?

 

[XDeltaOne]

Fantastic, thanks for the update. I was not aware of FTP from Laf111, but looking it up now, and I can see this likely is the safer solution than FTPiiU

Link: https://github.com/Laf111/WiiUFtpServer/releases

 

[MikaDubbz]

Link: https://github.com/Laf111/WiiUFtpServer/releases

What FTP client do you use on your PC? I've been using CrossFTP, but it keeps being uncooperative with transferring these files regardless which Wii U FTP app I use, at 6 and 8mb, they are larger than most files I've transferred in the past and I wonder if that has anything to do with it.

 

[XDeltaOne]

What FTP client do you use on your PC? I've been using CrossFTP, but it keeps being uncooperative with transferring these files regardless which Wii U FTP app I use, at 6 and 8mb, they are larger than most files I've transferred in the past and I wonder if that has anything to do with it.

This is the best FTP Client for me.
Here WinScp: https://winscp.net/eng/download.php
It's works perfect!

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

I just downloaded it. does the install version require the app be on the sd card as well?

What you mean?

 

[godreborn]

nm, I'll put it on both, so I have either option anyway.

 

[MikaDubbz]

This is the best FTP Client for me.
Here WinScp: https://winscp.net/eng/download.php
It's works perfect!

Cool, thanks for the help! Although right as I say this, I finally got it to go through properly with FTPiiU and CrossFTP, isn't that something lol.

 

[XDeltaOne]

nm, I'll put it on both, so I have either option anyway.

Yes both

 

[MikaDubbz]

The great news is that, it can be permanent, and surprisingly isn't as risky as you might think, though no one should be attempting it without CBHC regardless.

 

[XDeltaOne]

The great news is that, it can be permanent, and surprisingly isn't as risky as you might think, though no one should be attempting it without CBHC regardless.

Yes! I use CBHC Flump Mod

 

[godreborn]

The great news is that, it can be permanent, and surprisingly isn't as risky as you might think, though no one should be attempting it without CBHC regardless.

you have it installed as permanent now? do you have dkc tropical freeze and a pro controller? if so, see if the game starts with the A button like it normally should.