Feature: Support for theme packs

[hishitetsu]

What feature or improvement do you think would benefit Files?

We are going to support for displaying a background image. It would make the distribution of themes for Files easier if the theme could be changed by double-clicking on a theme pack file, which contains a background image and other theme settings.

Requirements

• Theme pack files have .filestheme extension.
• A theme pack file is actually a zip archive, which contains an image file for the background and a json file which stores theme settings.
• If the user opens a theme pack file, Files applies the background image and other theme settings contained within it.

Files Version

3.3.6.0

Windows Version

10.0.22631.3447

Comments

No response

[yaira2]

Thank you for your feedback

[TimoNotThy]

Wouldn't it make more sense to use CSS? How are the build-in "themes" currently implemented?

[Josh65-2201]

CSS is for web browsers and Files isn't a web site or based on one. Currently there values in settings that get applied across Files code base in XAML

[0x5bfa]

We have zip extractor inside of the codebase so making .filestheme as zip is a good idea.
We should register in our new database and show them like Windows Settings app does.

[TimoNotThy]

For ease of use I would not put it in any type of archive, this way it's easy to edit without having to unzip and zip constantly. Another solution would be to have it work like how Minecraft does texturepacks, having both folders and zip files work.

[Josh65-2201]

You wouldn't have to un-zip and re-zip to edit and test, at most it will be import > edit what you want > export. That's really as small as it can go. It stored as a zip when finalized so that all the files are available and easy to move around. Windows themes work the same just under a different extension.

[0x5bfa]

No reason to edit by your own it probably makes worsen because once it break you have to creat new one with correct names and configurations. So as @Josh65-2201 said, being archive is good enough.

[yaira2]

@hishitetsu I like this idea and I wanted to share some thoughts

• as there are sometimes changes to the theming options, we'll need some sort of versioning system, or at least proper error handling to only import valid values.
• it would be cool if this works with background images, we can probably copy the images to the app data folder.
• we might need to add a "reset" option to the appearance settings UI.

[0x5bfa]

We may want to take this into account (I'm not sure that is the cause).

[yaira2]

Would you recommend reading the values and saving them to Files settings, or is there a use case to keep a reference to the theme pack and read them directly each time Files is launched? Curious to hear your thoughts on the best approach.