How to change background in Sync.. (at your own risk)

[Vlad Soare]

It seems that the only way of changing the colour of the main buttons and header bar is to turn on the transparency feature, which makes everything next to illegible.

I would like to have the following:
- on the daytime skin, I want the home screen to remain unchanged, but the header and the big buttons to be light grey rather than blue (i.e. the same colour as the home screen cards).
- on the nighttime skin, I want all the dark blue everywhere to be replaced with black, or almost black.
In other words, I want the colour scheme that Sync 3.0 was using, while keeping the cards, buttons, map, etc. as perfectly outlined as they are now (that is, no blending in with the surrounding area).

I take it this isn't possible, is it? I mean, even if I make a plain grey bitmap file for the daytime skin, that won't make the buttons grey unless I make it transparent. And if I make it transparent, then all the home screen cards (e.g. phone, climate, map) will become transparent and will blend into the background. Is this correct?

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[StangTime]

It seems that the only way of changing the colour of the main buttons and header bar is to turn on the transparency feature, which makes everything next to illegible.

I would like to have the following:
- on the daytime skin, I want the home screen to remain unchanged, but the header and the big buttons to be light grey rather than blue (i.e. the same colour as the home screen cards).
- on the nighttime skin, I want all the dark blue everywhere to be replaced with black, or almost black.
In other words, I want the colour scheme that Sync 3.0 was using, while keeping the cards, buttons, map, etc. as perfectly outlined as they are now (that is, no blending in with the surrounding area).

I take it this isn't possible, is it? I mean, even if I make a plain grey bitmap file for the daytime skin, that won't make the buttons grey unless I make it transparent. And if I make it transparent, then all the home screen cards (e.g. phone, climate, map) will become transparent and will blend into the background. Is this correct?

I have been dissecting some of these themes to try and learn how they work. There are separate graphic files for day and night. They can be the same or different depending on what you load in the "day" and "night" folders. Just like we can have separate day and night backgrounds. The main button, and main button highlight, can be different (or transparent) for both as well. The issue is the text. I haven't been able to find out how to change the font color.

So for your ideal theme @Vlad Soare , your theme mod would load a grey menu bar into the "day" folder only and use one of the stock backgrounds. For night you would use a transparent bar into the night theme and load a black or whatever background you want for that.

But yes, for now the "transparent" theme will mess up the day mode visibility of the menu bar unless you use a fairly dark background image. Day could be a grey like the OEM Lincoln themes, and night could be a pitch black background image.

For me, I just use the night mode even during the day. I have the brightness level change for day and night and that's it. So for me this would be a fairly straightforward thing to do. For the scripting to load the themes, I have a lot of learning to do.

 

[Gnatsum21]

...
For me, I just use the night mode even during the day. I have the brightness level change for day and night and that's it.
...

That's what I started doing a while ago.

 

[Gnatsum21]

It's actually a custom theme, looks icy, but in the picture it looks blue.
So, guess what. I tried to revert back to transparent theme, like it the best, inserted USB, told me mod already exists. Hmm. Need to research. I am able to switch around using custom themes by reinstalling them, no go with transparent theme. Be warned.

EDIT: Submitted a "ticket" at FMods.

No ticket needed. I made a copy of the "AquaGlow Red" theme, copied and replaced a "bunch" of files from the "Transparent Bars" theme to the copy of the "AquaGlow Red" theme, loaded it via USB, and voila!
So basically you can turn any of the themes from FMods into a transparent theme if you want to.

 

[StangTime]

No ticket needed. I made a copy of the "AquaGlow Red" theme, copied and replaced a "bunch" of files from the "Transparent Bars" theme to the copy of the "AquaGlow Red" theme, loaded it via USB, and voila!
So basically you can turn any of the themes from FMods into a transparent theme if you want to.

Very cool! So you didn't have to edit the script at all or rename it?

 

[Gnatsum21]

Very cool! So you didn't have to edit the script at all or rename it?

Nope Thank the gods the FMods developers have a consistent naming scheme regarding their scripts and PNGs across the board.

 

[Gnatsum21]

I like the transparent look, but it looks like it would benefit from some dark outlines around the fonts and glyphs. I wonder if it’s possible to do a translucent style where the background is obscured and blurred behind the buttons. Could be shaded to help with readability.

When are you joining?

 

[StangTime]

Nope Thank the gods the FMods developers have a consistent naming scheme regarding their scripts and PNGs across the board.

Yes that is good! But I think that is done for a reason. The Sync3 system is calling specific files in specific locations. If those locations are altered in any way, then it won't work.

Edited: So it makes sense.

 

[Mike Pfeifer]

When are you joining?

Probably won’t be till after the new year at this point, way too much going on in the short term. But I’m looking forward to it for sure.

 

[Jroy333]

I like the transparent look, but it looks like it would benefit from some dark outlines around the fonts and glyphs. I wonder if it’s possible to do a translucent style where the background is obscured and blurred behind the buttons. Could be shaded to help with readability.

I switched it over to the day time setting, that way the lettering is black instead of white. I like the background to really care at this point. Ford drove me absolutely nuts with their themes for the radio. All that money and you get a dull blue.

 

[Gnatsum21]

Some rainy pictures. Look very nice on your Sync display.

 

[Mike Pfeifer]

Some rainy pictures. Look very nice on your Sync display.

Those are nice!

 

[Gnatsum21]

Last batch..

 

[Gnatsum21]

Created a quick (Linux) script to dump everything from the APIM to the USB stick. There is gigabytes of data coming out, and some very interesting stuff too.
Will let you know soon what I am reeling in

 

[Gnatsum21]

Useful site for FORscan coding, Sync and code lookup:

https://community.cyanlabs.net/c/ford-sync/asbuilt-configuration/15
https://cyanlabs.net/

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