Google Chrome is a fantastic browser for many reasons. We have talked about it over and over here on TechNorms. One of the reasons we love Google Chrome so much is because it has a lot of ways to customize it for your personal tastes. Themes are a great way to personalize your browser too. In fact, we have made some Google Chrome themes you can download.
If you want to flex your creative muscle, you can design your own. The problem is how. Theme Creator is an app for Google Chrome letting you create your own theme. You can change everything from the background image to the colors of the tabs. Take a look at the walk-through below and see how you can create your own Google Chrome theme in minutes.
The Chrome Web Store Part
You will need to head over to the Chrome Web Store and get the Theme Creator app. Like other apps in the Store, it is a shortcut to the web-app.
Once the Theme Creator is downloaded and installed, you can head on over to the web-app.
Using Theme Creator
When you are at the site, the home screen will look something like this.
What you are seeing is the preview on the right.
And the options to create your theme on the left. As you can see, there are two tabs up top, Basic and Advanced. The Basic tab has a couple of options. If you do not have any real knowledge of web design or image manipulation, you could start here.
If you are comfortable with some of the options you see in the Advanced tab, go ahead and jump right in. Keep in mind, no matter how badly you feel you messed up, you can always reset your theme to the default or change your theme to something else. This is accessible in your Google Chrome settings.
Creating a Google Chrome Theme
Start by naming your theme. This should be the first step when using the basic or advanced creation. You cannot download, install or save your theme without a name.
In the basic settings, you can start by uploading an image from your computer. Be mindful of the image size when you are adding an image with the basic settings. The image used here is 640×480 and you can see how much of the screen it uses. If you want it smaller or larger, you may need to make adjustments.
In the next section, you can choose a color combination to use. This is an easy way to change the color of the tabs, buttons, text and more.
When you have the colors changed and an image added, you can click Pack and Install and the theme will be added. When you click Add, your theme will change and your New Tab page will look like what you saw in the preview.
Advanced Google Chrome Theme Creation
The first setting in the Advanced tab is the image. You can upload the image to the NTP Background or choose a color. When you add an image, you can make adjustments to its placement using the new options.
You’ll also notice as you are hovering over the part of the theme you are making adjustments to, that part will be highlighted in the preview.
The rest of the options in the Images section let you add images or designs from your computer to different parts of the theme. Again, if you do not want to add an image, you can add a color instead. Of you want to get credit for you can add an image to the bottom right corner of the theme with your logo or name or whatever you’d like.
The next part of creating a theme is the colors. These colors are for the fonts and other smaller objects like the status bar and buttons. The Advanced option can also be used to tweak the theme you created using the basic option if you’d like.
When you have everything perfect, you are ready to install it. In the Pack tab, you’ll see different settings to let you install the theme, download the theme or download the theme in a zip file. What’s nice about Theme Creator is you can upload and edit the theme later.
Here is what the custom Google Chrome theme looks like when it is installed.
Final Thoughts
When you want to make your own very personalized Google Chrome theme, this is about the easiest way I have seen to do it. Even using nothing more than the basic setup you can really make good-looking themes.
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