ps5-theme 1.56

Custom home-screen themes for jailbroken PS5 consoles on firmware 13.60 and below. Runs as an etaHEN plugin or on its own from any ELF loader. Tested on firmware 13.42, both with etaHEN 2.5B (unified build) and from PS5 Payload Manager.

Which file?

• ps5-theme.plugin: for etaHEN. Copy it to /data/etaHEN/plugins/ and turn on auto-start.
• ps5-theme.elf: the same program for PS5 Payload Manager or any ELF loader (port 9021). No etaHEN needed.
• ps5-theme-stop.elf: only for when the manager can't be reached. Start it from Payload Manager or a payload loader, then start ps5-theme again. It stops the plugin and leaves your theme on the screen. Put it in a folder of its own under /data/pldmgr/payloads/.

Updating

• From 1.23 or later: copy the new file over the old one (or put it in /data/ps5-theme/update/). Within about 10 seconds the running plugin finds it and hands over, keeping your theme on the screen. No restart needed.
• From 1.22 or older: copy the new file and restart the console once.
• If you keep a copy in PS5 Payload Manager, replace that one too, so an old version isn't started from there.

New in 1.56 (since 1.55)

Appearance themes

• Replace the artwork of the PlayStation, PlayStation 2, 3 and 4 Appearance themes (Settings > Appearance and Sound): the Control Center's bottom panel, the top-right corner piece by the clock, and the home screen's artwork. In the editor, switch on Appearance themes.
• Placement for each piece: fill, fill with padding, fit or stretch, measured from the screen's edge the piece sits against. The corner piece can keep the clock and the search and settings icons clear, so a white picture doesn't hide the clock.
• See-through pictures work. A PNG or WebP with transparency keeps its see-through parts. The textures are made in the browser in the console's own format and checked against the system file byte for byte before they are accepted.
• They depend on the anniversary themes' textures in /system/vsh_asset being on the console, and show only while that Appearance theme is selected, after rest mode. The README's Appearance themes section tells how each piece is made and what is required.

Originals kept, options changed later

• The theme keeps the original of every picture and texture you attach (never applied to the console; one copy for all sizes). Change a piece's placement, or the fit setting for every picture, and the textures are made again at once from the originals, with nothing attached twice. Pieces attached before are read back from their texture.
• Keep original pictures can be switched off per theme to save space, and the kept ones removed with one click. The editor shows what they take.

Fixes

• A theme made before 1.56 with a page-made background is no longer reported as "applied partly": the plugin writes the texture again with the system file's frame header. Remembered file checks are now tagged with a revision of the rules, so a later version never trusts an earlier one's refusal.

Developer tool

• ps5-assetwatch.elf (build it from tools/assetwatch) lists the files the home screen and the web renderer map over two minutes, read-only. It is how the Appearance textures were located.

Checked

53 end-to-end tests on the host (full and emulated), the texture and font checks fuzzed with no findings, all 28 of the console's own Appearance and background textures accepted by the new checks, and a PS5 with 13.42: the Control Center's bottom panel, the corner piece and the home artwork with placement, padding and the clock band; options changed later, the fit setting and the switch for keeping originals were reported working on the last builds. The README's Tests on the console lists each test.

See the README for the full guide.

Checksums (SHA-256)

5719f27377d8b2e4ebe1ddf5da77ae0a11eb7490a86a94540b707b2cab80d5f3  ps5-theme.plugin
a07d28817730da8aa3222c7851dc9abe005e40d76562ff3f5551834712286e67  ps5-theme.elf
0e15bc9a3721d507b4cfbdf57637b4278d6062cf384780f10d5dd6c0ea2a4960  ps5-theme-stop.elf