Filed under: OS, Software, Hacks, Mods, iPhone
Customize your iPhone's background
While the iPhone's sleek, imageless design helps to keep things simple for everyone, I can understand some people's desire to customize their surroundings. While Apple isn't making this easy on anyone, keeping the iPhone locked up for themselves and all, that doesn't mean determined hackers aren't trying to pick the locks. For anyone interested in changing their iPhone's background from (arguably) boring black to something of their choosing, ModMyiPhone has just the how-to for you. Adventurer be warned, however: this is not for the light-hearted. This is a 15-step tutorial involving some ugly hacking with the Terminal app and digging around in your iPhone's guts. On the upside though, if something goes wrong I imagine you can easily get your iPhone back to square one with iTunes' Restore button, but I obviously am in no position to make any guarantees, so proceed with caution.That said, it sure would be nice to see Apple officially open up the iPhone to this kind of customization with a future software update. It totally makes sense that they themselves are using caution with their first foray into mobile phones though, so I wouldn't hold my breath for a feature update like this anytime soon.
Thanks spoonet!
Get a WordPress.com Blog
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ronald Poi said 5:01PM on 7-21-2007
What's with the need of customize everything?... It looks like a MySpace iPhone
Reply
Johnny Dangerously said 5:13PM on 7-21-2007
To #1: Ditto. Well said. Quote of the week! Sorry, I don't have much time for hacking my iPhone, because I'm USING IT TOO MUCH!
Reply
Alan said 5:46PM on 7-21-2007
@ #1: Exactly
It looks horrible and cluttered. That's why Apple hasn't let you customize the background of the icons. It's something a 14 year old girl would do, but not me.
Reply
lakiolen said 6:11PM on 7-21-2007
What's with the screwed up Calendar icon? And all in all it looks pretty fugly.
Reply
WakkaWakka said 10:39PM on 7-21-2007
Busy/colourful backgrounds to menus like this one are rife in custom themes for Series 60 devices, and I HATE them. Just makes it difficult to read the text or see the icons properly, and generally makes the whole thing rubbish. People just fuck up the design.
Reply
Reg Muffet said 10:49PM on 7-21-2007
Someone should put the graphic from a Windows Mobile 5 phone (the "Today" screen) there!
Then it would become full circle...
When the iPhone was announced in Jan, a skin to make a WM5 device look roughly like an iPhone appeared. I installed this, at first to help pass the 5 months until consummation, but then kept it because the silky black and colorful icons actually improved the WM5 Today screen no end.
To make an iPhone look like a WM5 phone again would be the height of Monty Python lunacy!
I might just have to brave the 512 step process and do it.
Reply
Marcos said 11:35PM on 7-21-2007
While I agree it's ugly and reminds me of MySpace, I think there are a lot of cell-phone buying 14 year old girls (ok, maybe not THAT many at this price). If you don't like it, don't change the background, but Apple should give you the option to do it.
However, obviously they had to do a lot of extra hard work to get this thing out at all, so I can see this and many other little features not making it out the door in version 1.0. The fact that you can't do something on the iPhone does not necessarilly mean that you won't ever be able to do it. It may just mean you can't do it yet.
Reply
Kurt Foster said 4:34AM on 7-22-2007
Why not simply grab a nice screen shot, import into iPhoto (or your PC photo program, and simply use it as wallpaper?
Reply
Justin Bell said 9:38AM on 7-22-2007
The reason Apple don't let people do this is so that when people like the creator of the said photo show their iPhone to a potential customer, they don't think "God, that's ugly" and get put-off buying one. Apple is, at the end of the day, a commercial organisation trying to turn a profit, and they hire people with good taste for a reason. And they aren't going to let people ditch their hard efforts without a good reason.
Reply
Philip said 6:44AM on 7-22-2007
Kurt Foster, go to the Apple iPhone website and watch one the ads- say, "How To." And look at the wallpaper.
Reply
Adam said 12:11PM on 7-22-2007
I'm confused... why not just use the wallpaper function? isn't that what it's there for? (although after looking at all of footage and pics it looks like the wallpaper DOESN'T appear behind the icons, just everything else...)
how much is too much? besides i like the black. its like... you look at it and ask how much more black could this get and the answer is none. none more black.
Reply
sophie said 1:27PM on 7-22-2007
here is a good link to a good collection of iPhone sized (320x480) wallpapers
http://iphone.interfacelift.com/
Reply
Leland said 3:20PM on 7-22-2007
"None more black..." ;-)
On my Pearl, I have to pay attention to which wallpaper I make & use so that it doesn't look like garbage behind the screenful-of-icons. I often end up with something dark and plain with low contrast, and although I haven't yet put in a plain black wallpaper, it would make a lot of sense.
Reply
blake savon said 4:01PM on 7-22-2007
Sheesh - I havent read this many negative ignorant comments in months... Most of you are complaining that a site spent time figuring out how to customize the iphone (for themselves and for you). Some of you said: "What's with the need of customize everything?"
WOW! I'm glad steve jobs didn't have this attitued when Microsoft was releasing their first operating systems - as he might not have gone forward with creating apple computers - and then NEXT (thus = osX). Or again have that attitude with his own computers look/style - or maybe we would still be looking at 10 inch green monochrome displays (that is black screens with green text only - for the first couple posters..: )
So yea - maybe this first screen shot / example isn't the best looking - but the idea behind what they hacked is a Great accomplishment! And I can't wait to see what else they do for us. I'm not big into bashing people but some of you needed a little slap. So don't quit your boring daytime jobs - because obv. your creativity level doesnt stretch far.
TUAW - keep up the Great work and thanks for this article!
Reply
Kyle Matthews said 4:31PM on 7-22-2007
Ha nice, blake. Yah, that's the idea - this is kind of a proof of concept thing. I agree the image is a little gay, and the implementation is not perfect, but the point is that we FIGURED IT OUT. So now we can start working on cooler images, etc.
And yah, I love the black look on the background, but not everyone does. And if you're willing to spend $600 on a phone, you better be able to put a wallpaper on it. Do all your $3000 Mac's have an all black desktop? I rest my case...
Reply
samrolken said 3:43PM on 7-24-2007
Oh great, now I can make my iPhone look really ugly.
Reply
pete said 4:44PM on 7-25-2007
Well i agree with the majority that the background is hideous, i dont agree with it being usless. Being able to "Personalize" an Iphone seems to be high on the list of most of the ipone users i know. From ringtones, to the small bone apple threw us being able to use an image imported as a wall paper. Great work to those that figured this one out, and to the fine folks that figured out the ringtone hack, and the new GUI so i dont have to mess around in terminal.
Reply
iphone hacker said 1:32AM on 9-20-2007
a better way to get custom backgrounds and custom icons is to:
1. Download iBrickr
2. After setting up iBrickr and jail breaking you iPhone add these applications("Launcher", "installer", and "summerboard")
3. Download the community package on the 'installer" app.
4. Then download the themes over the "installer" app.
5. Go to the "summerboard" app. and start changing the themes and backgrounds
Reply