Repainter App Allows Amazing Theming for Android 12 Smartphones

Last Updated on February 1, 2022 by Anu Joy

One of the major attractions of Google’s Android 12 operating system has been its ‘Material You’ theming engine, exclusive to Pixel phones. This theming, codenamed “monet”, detects the home screen wallpaper’s dominant colour and matches the colour scheme of various elements of the screen such as app icons and widgets via its colour extraction algorithms. Most third-party apps do not support this dynamic theming yet as the resources and libraries of Google’s Material You are yet to be published. However, app developer Danny Lin had earlier recreated the theming engine and made it open source. Lin has now released a theming app called Repainter for Android 12 smartphones.

Repainter Features

The Repainter app aims to provide users with even more customization options for the Material You’s colors. It lets you pick your own colour, and even change the colourfulness and brightness for your theme. The app also gives you advanced options to tweak the behaviour of the theme colours.

The app makes use of a loophole in the Fabricated Overlay API that lets users change and apply new color and dimension overlays on unrooted devices. Root access may be required, depending on your device and Android version. You may have to implement Shizuku to get shell-level access.

Repainter works best with root, but some functionality may be available without root (using Shizuku):

 • Samsung devices: All features are available, but a reboot is required to apply themes.

 • Pixel devices: Only custom color picking is available. Other customization is not possible.

 • Custom ROMs with Repainter support: All features are available, with no caveats (similar to root).

 • Other devices: Root is required.

The developer notes that with root access, all Android 12 devices and ROMs are fully supported. This includes support for Samsung One UI, OxygenOS, Asus ZenUI, as well as Sony. He adds that other skins may not have complete support without root access.

The app is available on the Google Play Store for ₹260.

Have you tried out the Repainter app? Does it work as expected? Let us know in the comments.