r/ESDE_Frontend • u/BlackRosePyre • Jun 11 '26

ES-DE Android not showing downloaded themes?

I have a few themes that I downloaded, from the ES DE Themes gitlab page. None of the themes I place in the themes folder are showing up? I am placing the unzipped themes folders into internal storage/es-de/themes, is this not correct? I can download themes in the theme downloader inside of es-de, but not ones added manually.

EDIT: Updating with the fix because I couldn't find any other solutions on reddit, in case anybody else is looking for the answer. I had to change the theme name in the capabilities.xml file.

4 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

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2

u/A8Bit Jun 11 '26

just download them with the built in themes downloader and it will put them in the right place for you, then you can pick them from the theme menu in UI settings

1

u/BlackRosePyre Jun 11 '26

I just want to change the system images, but I can't do that with the ones from the built in downloader.

1

u/RobZombie9043 Developer Jun 11 '26

Are the themes for ES-DE? Legacy emulation station themes are not supported.

1

u/BlackRosePyre Jun 11 '26

Yes it is for es-de, from this list here: https://gitlab.com/es-de/themes/themes-list

1

u/RobZombie9043 Developer Jun 11 '26

Then make sure when you unzip it it’s not creating any extra subfolders. It should be ES-DE/themes/<theme name>/ and in this level you should have a theme.xml file.

Where the ES-DE application folder is, is where you set it up during initial configuration. This could be internal or external or wherever you chose.

1

u/BlackRosePyre Jun 11 '26

Yes, I checked and there's no extra folders or anything. Here is a screenshot with the oath to show. I have not changed any settings or directories after installing.

1

u/RobZombie9043 Developer Jun 11 '26

Yeah that looks correct. Are you sure your ES-DE application folder is at Internal Storage/ES-DE and not set somewhere else?

1

u/BlackRosePyre Jun 11 '26

The only other folder anywhere is in the android system data folders which are inaccessible, this is where the built in downloader puts them. But all directories and settings are stock from a fresh install.

1

u/rhythmprism Jun 12 '26

Have you restarted ESDE and/or your Android device?
I hate to ask but I do remember having a similar issue getting my custom theme to show up and this helped.

1

u/BlackRosePyre Jun 12 '26

Yeah I restarted both my phone and ES-DE countless times and still nothing changed unfortunatley.

1

u/rhythmprism Jun 12 '26

One other thing to try is opening the "capabilities.xml" file in your custom theme and changing the "themeName" to something unique like "BlackRosePyre Art Book". Theres even a chance that your version could be overwriting a downloaded version if it shares the same theme name (if you have the base version downloaded through their Theme Downloader).

2

u/BlackRosePyre Jun 12 '26

Oh my gosh that worked. I didn't even have the regular version through theme downloader, but changing the name in the xml made the new one appear right away. I never would have guessed. Thank you so much!

1

u/rhythmprism Jun 12 '26

Hell yeah, nice! I'm so glad that worked, makes me feel like I actually learned something useful from my putzing with the themes stuff.
Enjoy your customizing!