3hs themes

What? 3hs can have themes?

That is correct. 3hs supports customizable themes since version 1.3.2. By default, two themes (dark and light) are installed.

How does it work?

3hs makes use of its own theming system, in which themes are stored in the HSTX format. It stands for 3hs Theme Extensible.

What all can be customized?

With themes, almost everything can be tuned to look the way you want it to. They support everything from the button icons, to colors, background images, and more to come.

How do you install themes?

3hs scans for HSTX files in sd:/3ds/3hs/themes, where sd:/ is the root of your SD card. Place your theme file(s) into that folder. Then, in 3hs, you should be greeted with your theme as an available option to choose in the theme selection menu. The theme selection menu can be found by entering the "more" menu, which is accessible via the icon with the three lines on the main screen.

How do you create themes?

The easiest way to create HSTX themes is to use our online theme creator. Usage of the online theme creator is simple. The theme consists of 3 main sections. Firstly, the metadata: here, the name and author of the theme are defined. Both are optional and may or may not be filled. The second section allows you to modify various images and icons used in 3hs. These can be left unchanged, however, when modifying them, it is better to use the recommended resolution as other resolutions may result in unexpected behavior. The third and last section is used to modify the color scheme used in 3hs. To modify a color, clicktap on the black square to pick a color to use for the corresponding part of the user interface. This will check the box to indicate that the color is to be used in the theme. The last two sections may have any field disabled by making the checkbox unchecked, if it is checked, then the field is in use. When a field is not in use, the default value from the builtin light theme is used. When you're done creating your theme clickpress on "Create theme" to generate the HSTX file and after that you can install it.

Warning: the following steps are for advanced users only. If you don't know what you're doing, use the online theme creator instead.

Another way to create HSTX themes is to use 3hstool, which is a command-line tool used for miscellaneous 3hs-related operations. Currently, 3hstool must be compiled from source.

In the 3hstool source folder, you will find files called light.cfg and dark.cfg. These are the theme configuration files used to create the default light and dark themes that are built into 3hs.

To create your own theme, you can use one of them as a base and edit the colors, images, name and author to your liking in a text editor. Further information about possible customization options is provided in both base .cfg files. Once you have made your changes, use the following command to create the HSTX file:
3hstool maketheme my-theme.cfg my-theme.hstx

If you did everything correctly, my-theme.hstx should have been created. This is the finalized theme file that is ready to be used with 3hs.

Want to explore the HSTX format in more detail? Feel free to browse through the 3hs source tree which contains the HSTX documentation and reference implementations.