In the Pack Extension dialog, hit the "Pack Extension" button. In the "Browse For Folder" popup, locate the version folder in your theme's extension directory, select it, and then hit OK. Next click the "Pack extension…" button and in the window that pops up, click browse next to the "Extension root directory". Then tick the "Developer mode" checkbox in the top right of the window: To do this, open a new tab in chrome and type " chrome://extensions" into the address bar and hit enter. You need to add your changes as a new theme to Chrome. Now at this stage, the changes that you've made won't have any effect. Save changes to the manifest file and close your Notepad application. "theme_ntp_background": "images/ my_new_theme_image.jpg" So, for example, if your image is named "my_new_theme_image.jpg", then you'd change the manifest file on line 29 to the following: Once you've done this, modify the manifest file so that "theme_ntp_background" points to your new image. So grab the image that you'd like to use and drop it into the images folder (in the same directory as your manifest.json). The images themselves are stored in the "images" folder. There are various images within the "images" section, but the one that we're interested in is theme_ntp_background. Now to change the image of the theme, we need to look at the "images" section of the manifest.json. You can pick a color and get the RGB values from an online color picker such as this or this. The colors are straightforward though, they change the color of the text and are in RGB format. It's not obvious what each of these mean though, so check Google's documentation.
The bit that we're interested in is the "theme" section which contains colors, images, properties and tints, which you're free to edit and customize. Double click and open this folder too, and inside there should be a file in there called manifest.json.Įdit "manifest.json" with your favourite text editor and you should see something similar to the following: Once you've located this folder, double click to open it and there should be a version folder. The most recent folder will be your newly installed theme. You should be able to find it easy enough though by clicking on "Date modified" and sorting by most recent first. It's in one of the folders with random letters. Once you're in the above directory we need to find the theme that you've just installed. Then navigate to ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Extensions to find the folder containing Chrome extensions.
If you're a Mac OS X user, then o pen the Terminal and type defaults write AppleShowAllFiles YES to show hidden files. Once you've enabled hidden items, you can then navigate to the following directory, but replace "*Username*" with your own username:Ĭ:Users*Username*AppDataLocalGoogleChromeUserDataDefaultExtensions
Simply open a new Explorer Window, click on the View tab and tick the "Hidden Items" checkbox. If you're a Windows user first make sure hidden files are shown in Windows Explorer. Simply head over to the Chrome Web Store, find a theme that you like, and hit "Add to Chrome".įor this next step, we need to find the folder containing your theme. Any theme will do because we'll be customizing it soon so that you can add your own photos etc.
With Chrome installed, you need to install a theme. My personal favourite is Notepad++, some people like Sublime, but you can choose any that you prefer. Get yourself a decent text editor other than the standard notepad that comes with Windows.
If you haven't, just download Chrome and install. The first thing you need to do, is make sure you've actually got Google Chrome installed on your computer.
It's really simple to do, just follow this step-by-step guide and you'll have it customized in no time! So for example, you can change the default text colors and even change your Google Chrome theme to use your own picture! If you've currently got a Google Chrome theme, you can actually tinker about with it to make it that little bit more personalized. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Disclosure: Bonkers About Tech is supported by its readers.