Homebrew Share and Download custom Wii U Themes

[Willicious]

Hi guys, complete noob here. I'm very interested in getting a nice custom theme going for my CFW, and have absolutely no idea how to get started. I'm running CB Tiramisu.

My questions are these (and, I totally understand if the answers aren't simple):

1. What's the best way to create/load custom themes?
2. In the images from MikaDubbz (which I can't add to my post yet because I'm a new user), are the console app icons for emulator launchers or folders with games inside?
3. Either way, those look great! How do I set this up?

I've been browsing this forum for a few days now in preparation for getting Tiramisu loaded, so I'm familiar with some of the terminology/acronyms etc. However, bonus points to whoever can baffle me the most with something I've not heard of yet!

Thanks in advance!

 

[MXRD4K1LL4]

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:

View attachment 291962
(if you're curious about repopulating the Wara Wara Plaza, find my thread on how to do so)
View attachment 291963
Another look at the bottom to show the minor changes I made to the folder creation tiles:
View attachment 291964

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.

How did you change the top menu apps?

 

[MikaDubbz]

How did you change the top menu apps?

The link in my signature about changing the wara wara plaza will guide you in that regard

 

[chronoss]

Where is the A Theme Manager ?

 

[godreborn]

Where is the A Theme Manager ?

Do you mean rosalina?

 

[chronoss]

Do you mean rosalina?

yes for wii u

 

[Deleted member 571007]

yes for wii u

Use this
https://github.com/Xpl0itU/theme-manager

 

[MikaDubbz]

Use this
https://github.com/Xpl0itU/theme-manager

Or if they don't want to permanently change the theme every time they use the manager to change a theme, use SDCafiine and create different folder modpacks for each theme. That way when they start sdcafiine it will immediately pull up the list of theme mods to choose from, and when the Wii U is reset, the last theme properly installed to the NAND will return. This is how I personally like do a theme manager while retaining my overall favorite theme I made as my default (Vaporwave Summer).

 

[Deleted member 571007]

Or if they don't want to permanently change the theme every time they use the manager to change a theme, use SDCafiine and create different folder modpacks for each theme. That way when they start sdcafiine it will immediately pull up the list of theme mods to choose from, and when the Wii U is reset, the last theme properly installed to the NAND will return. This is how I personally like do a theme manager while retaining my overall favorite theme I made as my default (Vaporwave Summer).

True, also I recommend using SDCafiine to test themes in the first place to verify if they actually work before accidentally getting bricked lol. Anyways I usually recommend the perma-installs just because most people I know use backround apps like TCP Gecko which cant be paired with SDCafiine, unless you try to use SDGeckiine which I really dont recommend lol

 

[chronoss]

Or if they don't want to permanently change the theme every time they use the manager to change a theme, use SDCafiine and create different folder modpacks for each theme. That way when they start sdcafiine it will immediately pull up the list of theme mods to choose from, and when the Wii U is reset, the last theme properly installed to the NAND will return. This is how I personally like do a theme manager while retaining my overall favorite theme I made as my default (Vaporwave Summer).

cau share Cafiine file ?

 

[Deleted member 571007]

cau share Cafiine file ?

https://apps.fortheusers.org/wiiu/SDcafiine

 

[SAORIxMEGUMIN]

Do you know why they used mipmapping for the BG when it is just a solid color? Is there any point where they actually utilize the smaller sizes?

 

[MikaDubbz]

Do you know why they used mipmapping for the BG when it is just a solid color? Is there any point where they actually utilize the smaller sizes?

You could do a small gradient, though I've never bothered, cuz I just assumed it would look like crap, though I believe I saw a custom one that did the gradient for the background and it didn't look too bad.

 

[Deleted member 571007]

You could do a small gradient, though I've never bothered, cuz I just assumed it would look like crap, though I believe I saw a custom one that did the gradient for the background and it didn't look too bad.

Yea a lot of the rainbow themes I've seen utilized the bitmapping as a gradient, it worked pretty well from what I saw.

 

[SAORIxMEGUMIN]

You could do a small gradient, though I've never bothered, cuz I just assumed it would look like crap, though I believe I saw a custom one that did the gradient for the background and it didn't look too bad.

I'm still trying to figure how to save the dds file in the correct format in gimp so that I can convert it replace the original.

I've never dealt with textures before.

It took a while for me to find the programs just to extract the files. Now I'm trying to learn how to edit them and repack with no previous knowledge of doing so in any other format on any other system.

 

[Verygafanhot]

Hello, i made a Minecraft Theme here is how it looks:

TV:

DRC:

Download: Drive

 

[BrokenTape]

I installed the pretendo theme and when I want to go back to the original console theme there are still things from the previous theme... can someone help me?

 

[CodyMKW]

[deleted]

 

[MikaDubbz]

I installed the pretendo theme and when I want to go back to the original console theme there are still things from the previous theme... can someone help me?

This is an oddity with transferring files to the NAND in general. You'll find that something you transferred seemingly worked but then you return and the change didn't take place, or a change did take place, but upon entering a title and returning to the menu that the change has reverted. Its like the Wii U has some sort of emergency backup that it pulls in a last gasp of error before or after making this kind of NAND change.

What you specifically here may find is that if you use the Installer or FTP to copy over the file and it says it completes, yet when you return to the Wii U, no change has taken place. This may be perfectly fine. What I want you to do is do this setup exactly again, and if it still hasn't changed the file at this point, immediately turn your Wii U off and then on again. You may be confused to find that now the change actually has taken place. If you don't immediately shut off at this point, then it will stay unchanged, but for whatever reason, if you turn off and on here, the change should then take place. I genuinely couldn't begin to understand why or how the Wii U behaves this way, but I've noticed this kind of consistently with changing multiple things from themes to channel icons, and more. Just for whatever reason, the best way to ensure everything worked, is as soon as you make any such change and return that first time to the Wii U menu, just turn the Wii U off and on again. Chances are you'll then have the results you were looking for.

 

[BrokenTape]

This is an oddity with transferring files to the NAND in general. You'll find that something you transferred seemingly worked but then you return and the change didn't take place, or a change did take place, but upon entering a title and returning to the menu that the change has reverted. Its like the Wii U has some sort of emergency backup that it pulls in a last gasp of error before or after making this kind of NAND change.

What you specifically here may find is that if you use the Installer or FTP to copy over the file and it says it completes, yet when you return to the Wii U, no change has taken place. This may be perfectly fine. What I want you to do is do this setup exactly again, and if it still hasn't changed the file at this point, immediately turn your Wii U off and then on again. You may be confused to find that now the change actually has taken place. If you don't immediately shut off at this point, then it will stay unchanged, but for whatever reason, if you turn off and on here, the change should then take place. I genuinely couldn't begin to understand why or how the Wii U behaves this way, but I've noticed this kind of consistently with changing multiple things from themes to channel icons, and more. Just for whatever reason, the best way to ensure everything worked, is as soon as you make any such change and return that first time to the Wii U menu, just turn the Wii U off and on again. Chances are you'll then have the results you were looking for.

thanks bro, i restarted the console and it worked for me