psyToy

Friday, September 5th, 2008

Until someone comes up with a WYSIWYG, user friendly theme editor, here are some simple batch files which will allow you to edit and customize the look of Google Chrome.

Effectively what you’re doing is modifying a file called default.dll. This contains a series of PNG files which make up the Google Chrome theme. The tools on this page allow you to extract the PNG files, you then edit them using your favourite paint program and reinsert them back into default.dll.

Installation

1. Download Google Chrome Theme Builder
2. Extract to C:\chrome_hack (or any other location of your choice)
3. Download ResHacker
4. Extract to C:\chrome_hack
5. Copy C:\Documents and Settings\<USER ACCOUNT>\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\0.2.149.27\Themes\default.dll to C:\chrome_hack

Usage

Assuming everything is installed correctly, the process of editing the Google Chrome theme is as follows:

1. Double-click “Chrome_Extract.bat”. All the images making up a theme are now available as individual PNG files
2. Edit the PNG files in your favourite paint program. Save and overwrite the existing files
3. Double-click Chrome_Build.bat to generate a new default.dll
4. Copy your new default.dll to C:\Documents and Settings\<USER ACCOUNT>\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\0.2.149.27\Themes\ and replace the existing default.dll

If you want to clean up the working directory (delete all PNG files that were extracted), double-click Chrome_Clean.bat

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