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7 <title>The rEFInd Boot Manager: Theming rEFInd
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12 <h1>The rEFInd Boot Manager:
<br />Theming rEFInd
</h1>
14 <p class=
"subhead">by Roderick W. Smith,
<a
15 href=
"mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
</a></p>
17 <p>Originally written:
4/
19/
2012; last Web page update:
18 11/
6/
2012, referencing rEFInd
0.4.7</p>
21 <p>I'm a technical writer and consultant specializing in Linux technologies. This Web page is provided free of charge and with no annoying outside ads; however, I did take time to prepare it, and Web hosting does cost money. If you find this Web page useful, please consider making a small donation to help keep this site up and running. Thanks!
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89 <p>This page is part of the documentation for the rEFInd boot manager. If a Web search has brought you here, you may want to start at the
<a href=
"index.html">main page.
</a></p>
93 <h2>Theming Basics
</h2>
95 <p>As described on various other pages of this document, rEFInd relies on icon files located in its
<tt>icons
</tt> subdirectory, and occasionally elsewhere, to define its overall appearance. You can adjust rEFInd's theme in a few ways:
</p>
99 <li>You can create new icons, place them in a subdirectory of rEFInd's main directory, and tell the program to use the new icons by setting the
<tt>icons_dir
</tt> token in
<tt>refind.conf
</tt>. This will affect the appearance of the OS tags, the utility tags, and so on. The names of these icons should match those in the
<tt>icons
</tt> subdirectory, and are fairly self-explanatory. If an icon is missing from the directory specified by
<tt>icons_dir
</tt>, rEFInd falls back to the icon from the standard
<tt>icons
</tt> subdirectory; thus, you can replace just a subset of the standard icons. Be aware that rEFInd expects its icons to be in Apple's
<a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icns">icon image format (ICNS).
</a> You can generate such files easily in various Apple programs, or by using the
<a href=
"http://icns.sourceforge.net/">libicns
</a> library (and in particular its
<tt>png2icns
</tt> program) in Linux.
</li>
101 <li>You can do as above, but place your new icons in the default
<tt>icons
</tt> subdirectory. This method is discouraged because using the
<tt>install.sh
</tt> script to upgrade rEFInd will replace your customized icons.
</li>
103 <li>You can customize the appearance of an individual boot loader by placing an ICNS file in its directory with the same name as the boot loader but with a
<tt>.icns
</tt> extension. For instance, if your boot loader program is
<tt>elilo.efi
</tt>, you can create a custom icon by naming it
<tt>elilo.icns
</tt>.
</li>
105 <li>You can provide an icon for boot loaders stored in the root directory of a filesystem by placing a file called
<tt>.VolumeIcon.icns
</tt> in that volume's root.
</li>
107 <li>You can set a custom badge (the small icon that identifies the disk type) by creating a file called
<tt>.VolumeBadge.icns
</tt> in that volume's root. This setting applies to all the boot loaders found on this volume, even if they're in subdirectories.
</li>
109 <li>You can adjust the selection background (used to highlight a selected icon) by creating new icons in Microsoft's
<a href=
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMP_file_format">BMP format
</a>. You should create both
144x144 and
64x64 images and tell rEFInd about them by using the
<tt>selection_big
</tt> and
<tt>selection_small
</tt> tokens, respectively, in
<tt>refind.conf
</tt>.
</li>
111 <li>You can create a new background image and logo by placing a BMP file in rEFInd's main directory and passing its filename to rEFInd with the
<tt>banner
</tt> option in
<tt>refind.conf
</tt>. If the image is smaller than the screen, the color in the top-left corner of the image will be used for the rest of the display.
</li>
115 <p>Of course, not all of these elements are likely to be included in themes. A minimal rEFInd theme would provide just a new icons subdirectory, to be set via
<tt>icons_dir
</tt>. A more thorough theme would include a changed background image or selection backgrounds.
</p>
117 <p><b>Note:
</b> If you'd like to design a logo for rEFInd, please do so! I lack the sort of artistic talent required for creating logos, so I just used plain text. I'd like to have something more eye-catching, though. I don't promise to use the first logo I'm given, but if you have some ideas, or would like to discuss some ideas, feel free to
<a href=
"mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">e-mail me.
</a></p>
119 <h2>Known Themes
</h2>
121 <p>I used icons from the Oxygen Icons project, both from the
<a href=
"http://deviantdark.deviantart.com/art/Oxygen-Refit-70199755">Oxygen Refit
</a> package and from Gentoo's
<tt>oxygen-icons
</tt> package. These icons supplemented or replaced icons that rEFIt used; however, many OS icons (such as those for Windows and Mac OS) are carried over from rEFIt. I've also used a handful of icons for individual Linux distributions from other sources
—usually documentation associated with the distribution in question.
</p>
123 <p>In addition to this default icon set, I've received word of two other rEFInd themes:
</p>
127 <li><a href=
"http://ecto-plazm.deviantart.com/art/rEFInd-Icon-Theme-296571397">ecto-plazm's theme
</a></li>
129 <li><a href=
"http://opendesktop.org/content/show.php?content=153267">The Gris Theme
</a> (also available as an
<a href=
"https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=61917">Arch Linux package
</a>.)
</li>
133 <p>If you've created or discovered another rEFInd theme, please
<a href=
"mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">tell me about it
</a> so that I can provide a link to it from this page.
</p>
137 <p>copyright
© 2012 by Roderick W. Smith
</p>
139 <p>This document is licensed under the terms of the
<a href=
"FDL-1.3.txt">GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), version
1.3.
</a></p>
141 <p>If you have problems with or comments about this Web page, please e-mail me at
<a href=
"mailto:rodsmith@rodsbooks.com">rodsmith@rodsbooks.com.
</a> Thanks.
</p>
143 <p><a href=
"index.html">Go to the main rEFInd page
</a></p>
145 <p><a href=
"linux.html">Learn about methods of booting Linux with rEFInd
</a></p>
147 <p><a href=
"http://www.rodsbooks.com/">Return
</a> to my main Web page.
</p>