Android O may get support for custom themes in the final release

by Milen Yanachkov / May 19, 2017, 3:05 AM

New theming options in Android O Developer Preview 2

The final release of Android O may bring about a feature that's long been a staple of custom ROMs and a favorite among modders – support for custom themes. Seeing as how this has been one of the major incentives to get your phone rooted in the past, it only makes sense that Google finally implements this functionality into Android. Nothing is set in stone at this point, so don't get your hopes too high, but we noticed an interesting new option in the "Display" settings page in Android O Developer Preview 2 on the Pixel, which wasn't there before. It's called "Device theme."

"Device theme" currently has two options, "Pixel" and "android.auto_generated_rro_", although "Pixel" does nothing at this point, and the OS automatically reverts to the other option. What's more interesting though, is the "_rro" part in the name of the first setting. According to XDA, this could be in reference to Sony's Runtime Resource Overlay (RRO) theming framework, which very well-developed and still used by some a number of popular Android ROMs. There is no concrete evidence at this point to confirm this, and Google might have implemented the feature into this developer preview solely for testing purposes.

Still, it's not too out of the question that we'll see expanded theming options in the final release of Android O. If Google is indeed building on RRO, this will bring even more variety to the table, since there's a ton of compatible themes out there and developers are already familiar with the framework.

via XDA

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4 Comments

1. manishmuscat

Posts: 12; Member since: May 07, 2017

nice..thats awesome news

posted on May 19, 2017, 4:08 AM 1

3. juandante

Posts: 679; Member since: Apr 23, 2013

Agreed. This normally had to be one of the first features of Android since its développement. Theming is an essential part of any OS and limits companies like Samsung from doing so much heavy un-optimized skins like TouchWiz.

posted on May 19, 2017, 8:42 AM 3

4. Macready

Posts: 1824; Member since: Dec 08, 2014

Seeing the battery life of my S8, the skin isn't heavy at all and that includes the option for countless of themes already.

posted on May 19, 2017, 12:33 PM 0

2. vincelongman

Posts: 5699; Member since: Feb 10, 2013

I hope this is why they made parts of the UI white Would be great if there was a light theme and a dark theme Automatic switching depending on light or time or battery would be awesome