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.
