HTC has two different types of themes in their Sense UI, and today I’m going to show you what an HTC 10 Freestyle Theme is and how to customize one.
Similarly to how I showed you how to change the theme yesterday, selecting an HTC 10 Freestyle Theme is pretty much the same process. The difference here is how the Freestyle Themes are laid out. Classic Themes go by the traditional app grid and use the traditional app icons on the Home Screen.
But a Freestyle Theme doesn’t have these grids, and they use custom stickers instead of traditional app icons.
You can think of these stickers kind of like you do with a custom icon pack. Custom icons packs are still using traditional sized icons though while stickers can be all sorts of sizes and shapes. Since stickers aren’t bound to a grid for placement, you can have these stickers all over the screen. This results in a very unique and quite natural looking home screen.
So let me show you how to change from a Classic Theme to an HTC 10 Freestyle Theme, and then show you a few ways to customize it.
HTC 10 Freestyle Theme
- Long press on an empty spot of the Home Screen
- Tap on the ‘Change Home Screen Layout’ option
- Tap on the ‘Freestyle Layout’ option
- Browse and pick out an HTC 10 Freestyle Theme you like
- Tap on the ‘Download’ button on the theme you like
- Tap on the ‘Apply’ button after the theme has been downloaded
- Then tap the Home button to go back to the Home Screen
Explanation
So like I said, the process is similar except instead of tapping on the Change Theme option in the Personalize popup menu, we’re going to choose the Change Home Screen Layout option. You can technically pick out an HTC 10 Freestyle Theme with by just choosing the Change Theme option, but going this route will automatically take you to the Freestyle Theme section of HTC’s theme store.
Once you are at the Freestyle theme section of the theme store, you can then start to browse through all of the different themes that HTC has to offer. If you go back to the Theme store home page, you can even search for themes and you’ll see a Freestyle Theme section right under the Classic Theme section on the search results page. Either way you go, you’re wanting to pick out a theme style that you enjoy the most.
After you pick out the theme you want, download it and then apply it to the HTC 10 just like we did yesterday (this is demonstrated in the video above too) and then press the Home button to go back to the Home Screen. You’ll see the new HTC 10 Freestyle Theme in place and from here you can start to customize it however you like. As mentioned, Freestyle Themes use stickers instead of app icons, but they work in a similar fashion.
So, you can tap and hold on a sticker and move it anywhere you would like on the screen. Most objects on the screen are a sticker (although some are just the background). So if you see a sticker on the screen that isn’t linked to an app, all you have to do is tap on it and you’ll be asked what app you want to link it to. You can also long press on an empty spot of the Home Screen and tap the Add Sticker option to add another sticker onto the scene.
While this theme system is nice, and it can create some unique Home Screen setups, it does seem that the whole thing is in its infancy. In the video I did above, the living room HTC 10 Freestyle Theme didn’t have any additional stickers available that weren’t already laid out by default. It is nice that you can add more of one type of sticker (like more pillows, or more lamps in my example), I would just like to see more types of themed stickers to choose from.
