The rEFInd Boot Manager:
Theming rEFInd
by Roderick W. Smith, rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
Originally written: 4/19/2012; last Web page update:
1/8/2013, referencing rEFInd 0.6.4
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!
Donate $1.00 |
Donate $2.50 |
Donate $5.00 |
Donate $10.00 |
Donate another value |
|
|
|
|
|
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 main page.
Theming Basics
As described on various other pages of this document, rEFInd relies on icon files located in its icons subdirectory, and occasionally elsewhere, to define its overall appearance. You can adjust rEFInd's theme in a few ways:
- 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 icons_dir token in refind.conf. 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 icons subdirectory, and are fairly self-explanatory. OS tags should be 128x128 pixels, while tags for 2nd-row utilities should be 48x48 pixels. If an icon is missing from the directory specified by icons_dir, rEFInd falls back to the icon from the standard icons subdirectory; thus, you can replace just a subset of the standard icons. rEFInd can use icons in either Apple's icon image (ICNS) or Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format. PNG files are easier to generate on most platforms. You can generate ICNS files in various Apple programs or by using the libicns library (and in particular its png2icns program) in Linux.
- You can do as above, but place your new icons in the default icons subdirectory. This method is discouraged because using the install.sh script to upgrade rEFInd will replace your customized icons.
- You can customize the appearance of an individual boot loader by placing an ICNS or PNG file in its directory with the same name as the boot loader but with a .icns or .png extension. For instance, if your boot loader program is elilo.efi, you can create a custom icon by naming it elilo.png.
- You can provide an icon for boot loaders stored in the root directory of a filesystem by placing a file called .VolumeIcon.icns or .VolumeIcon.png in that volume's root.
- You can set a custom badge (the small icon that identifies the disk type) by creating a file called .VolumeBadge.icns or .VolumeBadge.png in that volume's root. This setting applies to all the boot loaders found on this volume, even if they're in subdirectories.
- You can adjust the selection background (used to highlight a selected icon) by creating new icons in PNG or in Microsoft's BMP format. You should create both 144x144 and 64x64 images and tell rEFInd about them by using the selection_big and selection_small tokens, respectively, in refind.conf. If you omit the large icon, rEFInd will stretch the small icon to fit the larger space; if you omit the small icon, rEFInd will use the default small icon. Because BMP doesn't support transparency (alpha channels), you must use the PNG format if you want your selection background to show the underlying image beneath it. (You can create the illusion of transparency on a solid background by matching the colors, though.)
- You can create a new background image and logo by placing a PNG or BMP file in rEFInd's main directory and passing its filename to rEFInd with the banner option in refind.conf. 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.
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 icons_dir. A more thorough theme would include a changed background image or selection backgrounds.
Note: 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 e-mail me.
Known Themes
I used icons from the Oxygen Icons project, both from the Oxygen Refit package and from Gentoo's oxygen-icons 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.
In addition to this default icon set, I've received word of two other rEFInd themes:
If you've created or discovered another rEFInd theme, please tell me about it so that I can provide a link to it from this page.
copyright © 2012–2013 by Roderick W. Smith
This document is licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), version 1.3.
If you have problems with or comments about this Web page, please e-mail me at rodsmith@rodsbooks.com. Thanks.
Go to the main rEFInd page
Learn about methods of booting Linux with rEFInd
Return to my main Web page.