UPDATE: This post contains information about Sweeter Home Preview 1 which has now been superseded by Sweeter Home 2. Some information in this post may be outdated or inaccurate for use with Sweeter Home 2.
OK, so you’ve installed Sweeter Home but you’re not sure how to install new themes! Below we’ll take a look at loading built in themes as well as downloading theme’s from the internet (or getting one from a friend) and loading it from your SD card.
When you launch Sweeter Home for the first time the help theme will load (below). Swipe between screens and jump from portrait to landscape (open the keyboard) to read more from the developer.
To load another built in theme hit the menu button on your G1 and select Themes. From the included list of build in themes let’s choose Caramel. Wait for it to load and there it is!
So loading the built in themes is nice and easy, but what about loading a theme from your SD card? We’ll assume you can figure out how to modify an existing built in theme and save it to your SD card, then load that, so let’s walk through downloading Dark Rising from this site and install it in Sweeter Home.
First, on your computer (not on your G1) visit the page for the latest Dark Rising theme. Click on “download” and save the zip to somewhere convenient on your computer. UNZIP the file and have a look in the included folder. You’ll find a wallpaper, a readme file (hint: read it!), and a .sly file, which is the file type for Sweeter Home themes. Connect your G1 to your computer via USB and mount the G1. On your computer explore the SD card and locate SD/sweeterhome. That where we want to drag the .sly file for Dark Rising. See the screen shots below!
Next, on your computer un-mount your G1 and disconnect the USB cable. You now have the Dark Rising theme in the sweeterhome directory on your SD card, ready to install!
Back on your G1 and in Sweeter Home, hit the menu button and select Themes. Hit the menu button again and select SD Card. A list of all files in the sweeterhome directory on your SD will appear. Select Dark Rising 2.1.sly from the list and wait…
Congratulations! You just downloaded Dark Rising from the internet, unzipped it, dragged the .sly file to your SD card, and installed it in Sweeter Home. Enjoy!!
had a question about working with themes; I have made some themes and was wondering how to view them on the computer / take screen shots to post? Not super computer savvy and don’t know how to open the .sly file or how to get screen shots. Any help is much appreciated. Great work by the way, this is a great blog and I enjoy your tips and themes!
Hey man, I’m running a Mac and have the SDK installed. Included with it is a program called DDMS from which you can get screenshots. If you’re running a Mac I can give you a little more help, otherwise do a google search… there’s a few step by step tutorials out there. Once you have it set up though it’s really easy to use.