ColorOS Launcher Customization: Build a Pro Setup
With a few simple tweaks, the stock ColorOS launcher can go from the default Oppo home screen to a clean Frosted Sun setup without switching to Nova Launcher. This ColorOS launcher customization uses Palette for the setup assets, KWGT for widgets, and a workaround for compact home screen icons that the launcher cannot build on its own. It takes patience, especially if you want notification dots, but the result looks polished and still opens apps with lovely animations.
Start with Palette, KWGT, and the Frosted Sun setup
I did not come up with this home screen design myself. I found it in my home screen setup app, Palette, where regular contributor Raghav Khurana submitted the setup called Frosted Sun. The setup details page is useful because it pulls the assets into one place, so you can open them one by one and install what you need.
For this exact setup, I ignored the Nova Launcher asset because the whole point here is recreating the look with the stock ColorOS launcher. The wallpaper is free through the Backdrops app if you search for Scarlet Soul, but keep in mind that the icon pack and widget pack both cost about a dollar.
You do not have to recreate Frosted Sun exactly. If you want to keep everything free, tap the filter icon on the Palette home page and show only setups that use unpaid assets, then use the same methods from this guide on whichever setup you like.
KWGT is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. It gives us the date and weather widget, and later it also lets us fake a compact icon grid that ColorOS cannot create natively.
Clear the ColorOS home screen before building anything
The first real step is getting to a completely blank home screen. Unfortunately, ColorOS is one of the more cumbersome launchers for this because you can select up to 24 apps and remove them in one go, but that is the limit. If you have several pages of apps, you have to keep removing them in batches.
Once the apps are gone, remove any widgets as well. I would love Oppo to add a feature where tapping the bottom app page indicator lets you remove full home screen pages at once, similar to how it works on iOS, but for now the blank slate takes a bit of manual work.
Set the ColorOS layout before adding widgets
After clearing the home screen, long press the home screen, tap Layout, and choose the five columns option. I also enable Hide icon names, then go into Home screen settings and disable Add new apps to home screen so the layout stays clean.
For the lock screen, I have been obsessed with the Contrarian section inside the All Flux themes. If you want the same feel, pick one of the demo options there, then set the Scarlet Soul wallpaper from your album. On my Oppo Find X9 Pro, the wallpaper loads in with a lovely depth effect, and that finishes the basic home screen configuration.
Build the date and weather widget in KWGT
Long press the home screen, open Widgets, search for KWGT, and add the top widget option. Resize it, drag it into the middle of the screen, then tap it to open KWGT. In the Palette setup details, the widget name is listed as B006, so search for B006 inside KWGT and load it in.
The widget already looks pretty great, but I make a few tweaks so it fits this setup properly. I scale the layer up to about 100, change the top white text to black, create a new global color called C1, and set that C1 color to gray. Then I use that C1 global color on the rectangle shape, the day text layer, and both bottom text layers so the widget matches the wallpaper.
| KWGT setting | Value or change |
|---|---|
| Widget name | B006 |
| Main layer scale | About 100 |
| Overlap group scale | 110 |
| Y offset | 54 |
| X offset | About 15 |
| 8 layer top padding | 20 |
For the tap action, go to the Touch tab, change the action to Launch app, and select your weather app of choice. I used Gradient Weather. You may need a bit of trial and error on your own phone, especially around the X and Y offsets, but once it is saved you get a clean date and weather widget that opens your weather app when tapped.
Use ColorOS icon pack support for the app drawer
ColorOS does support third-party icon packs, which is great, so I use Taco Deluxe for the app drawer. Long press the home screen, tap Wallpapers and style, swipe to Icons, select the newly downloaded Taco Deluxe icon pack, decrease the size all the way down, and apply it. Boom, the app drawer icons are themed beautifully.
The problem is the home screen. The Frosted Sun setup uses a really compact 4 by 2 icon configuration, and that is not possible with the stock ColorOS launcher on its own. So instead of using normal home screen icons, I build the icons as another KWGT widget.
Create compact home screen icons with a KWGT widget
Add another KWGT widget, resize it horizontally and vertically, and place it just underneath the date and weather widget. Tap the blank widget, choose Create, and start with a blank canvas. I create a stack group called Top icons first, because keeping the structure organized matters once the widget starts filling up with layers.
- Add a Stack Group and rename it Top icons.
- Inside it, add an Image layer for the first app icon.
- Pick the image from the Taco Deluxe icon pack.
- Scale the icon width down to 50.
- Add a Touch action and set it to Launch app.
- Choose the matching app, then rename the layer clearly.
For my first example, I search the Taco Deluxe icon pack for YouTube Studio, select that icon, scale the width down to 50, and set the touch action to launch the YouTube Studio app. Then I rename the layer YT Studio. I repeat the same process for X, and then for the rest of the top row.
If some icons disappear out of view, switch the stack group’s stacking mode from Vertical Left to Horizontal Center. For my top row, I set the Y offset to -20. Then I create a second stack group called Bottom icons, repeat the same icon process, change its stacking mode to Horizontal Center, and set its Y offset to plus 25.
Once both rows are built, I go back to the main layer and increase the scale to 150. After saving, the home screen has the compact icon grid from the setup, and the app opening and closing animations still look beautiful.
Use stack groups so future tweaks are not painful
I know the stack groups, overlap groups, and components make the first setup feel more cumbersome. But after years of keeping every home screen element in the root section of a KWGT widget, I got so over manually selecting every single element just to move something slightly.
Building the widget with grouped layers takes longer at the start, but it makes adjustments much easier later. If you plan to keep refining your setup, the extra organization is absolutely worth it.
Add KWGT notification dots if you want the full illusion
The only thing missing from the compact KWGT icon widget is notification dots. Believe it or not, you can recreate those too. Open the icon widget, add an Overlap Group, add a Component inside it, then create a Shape inside the component.
For the dot, change the shape from square to circle and set the width to 10. I use a faded green color for the Spotify dot, then set the left padding to about 85 and the top padding to about 15 so it sits where the system notification dot would normally appear relative to the Spotify icon.
The visibility formula is the clever part. I paste in the formula from the description, which checks whether there are notifications from the Spotify app in the notification panel. If there are, the dot shows. If not, the dot is removed.
If you want to use the formula for a different app, update the package name inside the formula. If you do not know the package name, search the app name followed by package name Android. For Chrome, I used com.android.chrome.
To make additional dots faster, copy the Spotify component, paste it, rename the duplicate, temporarily disable the visibility formula so you can see what you are doing, change the dot color and position, then update the package name. Repeat that process for as many or as few apps as you like.
The finished ColorOS setup is only a starting point
Once the wallpaper, widgets, compact icons, and optional notification dots are all in place, the stock ColorOS launcher looks completely different. The nice part is that none of these techniques are locked to Frosted Sun. You can use the same Palette asset approach, KWGT widget building, custom icon layers, and notification dot trick on another setup entirely.
That is really the point of this whole process. You now have the tools and knowledge to take the stock launcher much further than it looks like it can go at first glance. From here, the sky's the limit.
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