Gizmodo
Getting fed up with that boring black font color on your iPod? Now you can get in there and change the menu text, title bar or secondary to a bright red color (or any other of your choice) that's sure to set you apart from all those me-too fanboys.
It's done by hacking into the iPod's firmware using a little application called iPodWizard (iPW), which you can download here. Once you've done that, it looks pretty easy to change that color:
Open iPW, load your firmware. Go to Layout, scroll down to Font Types. In that list, go down to item 24223, which is the titlebar string. Now look at the z2 tag. It should say 0xFF000000. We're going to change that. Click on it so that the cursor goes into the hex field and highlights the first character in the series of hex, which should at the moment say 00 00 00 FF. Ignore the FF at the end, and change the first three digit series from 00 00 00 to DD 00 00. Write [to] your iPod, eject, and look. Your titlebar text is now red!You can also change the iPod's font sizes, but be careful, this could get a little tricky.
Change your font color! [Ipod Wizard]
Comments
mmmmmm.... byte hacking yer IpOD, sounds like a great way to get a shiny, shiny brick, if'n you don't be careful.
This is probably a tool put out by his Steveness himself to boost sales even higher...
You own an iPod.
Too late.
You will not brick your ipod, if anything goes wrong you can just plug ur ipod in hard drive mode and restore you firmware. If you are new to this you should go to the wiki and read their tutorials.
Yeah I'm so sick of the black font. So sick in fact, I submit my assignments in bright yellow.
I tried this on my shuffle and it didn't work...
Aww man that looks so s#itty in retrospect.
I'm sorry. Music is awesome. If it works for you enjoy.
Damn.
Now where is the firmware hack to make the iPod screen scramble into a kaleidoscope visualization during playback?
OH MY GOD! YOU CAN CHANGE THE TEXT COLOR ON YOUR EYE-POD!
Jesus.
I thought it expressly said in the book of Jobs that 'thou shalt not alter thy perspective on the holy word'.
Now, it is a well known popular interpretation of that passage to be a reference to some of the Apple rumor blogs out there. However, I am fairly convinced that Jesus was referring to font color and size on any device from the Holy Land.
Difficult to say for certain, but I would be careful. You do not want to feel the wrath of his holyness.
If your gonna go about messing with your firmware, you may as well switch to rockbox.
Rockbox makes your battery life go WAY down and 5.5 generation is not supported yet. I am not saying Rockbox isn't cool, just that if you want to change your font color it is not necessary to make the jump. However, if you have to play Doom on your iPod, then by all means, go for it.
Also, iPod Wizard has been around for ages. Only recently have they found how to change the font color on the 5th gen. iPods.
been there, done all this... I've switched out a lot of the loading photos on the iPod with some I've made in photoshop that look a lot cooler...
dude, i use rockbox full time and it makes AppleOS look like crap...
Does not work on a 80gb ipod or certain newer firmware versions. Too bad. Apple would make a killing if they ever created their own software to mod your ipod screns and colors. Consider all the kiddies who bling up thier cell phones.
The Creative Zen Vision:M comes with 6 themes that will change the background color and text of the player. The iPod does not. Just another reason to get a Creative ZVM!
Nothing says "fanboi" like "Just another reason to get a Creative ZVM!"
Ack. No better way to make the UI look like some ugly XP variant than to change the text color to something that makes no sense.
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