How to Recreate the “One Goal” Custom Home Screen Layout

In this guide, I’ll show you how to replicate my custom Android home screen layout, “One Goal”, using just ADW Launcher EX, Minimalistic Text, and a custom background.

One Goal - The final result

Getting Set Up

First of all, here are a few things that I won’t be addressing:

• Installing apps
• Taking screenshots
• Installing fonts
• Using Photoshop

What you’ll need, to make this layout from scratch:

• Photoshop or a similar image editor (to create the background)
• Computer (of course!)
• ADW Launcher EX
• Minimalistic Text
• Multi Picture Live Wallpaper
• App to take screenshots – this is built in to some phones; if not yours, then see this guide
• App to upload and download files to and from the phone (find a selection here)

Fonts:

• Tall Dark and Handsome (free)
• Helvetica Narrow CE (paid)

Other files:

• Minimalistic Text prefs
• PSD files (along with a blank PNG)

Once you’ve got all that, you’re ready to continue…

Setting Up ADW Launcher EX

Let’s start!

Note: my interface is set to Portuguese, but I’ll guide you through it.

Get ADW Launcher EX up and running, with two home screens.
First, set up the grid size: 9 columns by 10 rows. (UI Settings > Screen preferences > Desktop Columns and UI Settings > Screen Preferences > Desktop Rows.)
Next, hide the status bar and desktop dots, and allow overlapping widgets. (These options are all in UI Settings > Screen preferences: check “Hide StatusBar”, uncheck “Show desktop indicator”, and check “Overlap widgets”.
Also, hide the icon text. (UI Settings > Screen preferences > Advanced settings: check “Hide icon labels”).
Now remove the dock background, by selecting “None” as the value of “Main dock”:

The ADW Themes Preferences menu

Next alter your General Behavior > Animation and Effects settings according to your preferences. I’ve turned off “infinite scroll”, and have turned on “wallpaper scroll” – you’ll need this, if you want to use MP Live Wallpaper and ADW’s Sense previews.
Finally, set “dock size” to 1, in UI Settings > Main Dock.

Setting Up Your Home Screens

Set up MP Live Wallpaper using this wallpaper for both screens. (You can download it from here; it’s 540x960px, but you can easily adapt it to fit your phone’s resolution). This will be the base for our layout.

Basic Wallpaper - click for full size

Add to the screen an ADW Launcher Action shortcut (long-press the screen, then select Launcher Actions). Choose “Open/close App Drawer”:

Launcher Actions

Long press the icon you just added and select Edit:

Edit the new icon

Tap the icon, then choose the “blank.png” file from the zip that you downloaded earlier. It will look like this:

No picture for the icon, because it's fully transparent.

Drag this icon – beware, as it will be transparent – to the dock, and tap it to make sure it opens the app drawer.
We are now ready to add Minimalistic Text widgets to the screens.

Adding Widgets

We’ll use a few different sizes of Minimalistic Text widgets:

• Clock: 2×2
• Location: 3×1
• News, Music, Gallery, Nav, Other: 1×1
• All the rest: 2×1

I’m only going to show you the setup for the first MText widget, the clock – you can use the MTPrefs for everything else.
Always, always give your widget a name, for future editing and sharing:

Remember to name your widgets

Set MText to hide your widget background:

Uncheck 'Show background'

Under Text Style, tap “Normal”, then select “font family”, and choose the right typeface to use: “Tall, Dark and Handsome”, with a size of 168dip, in white, with no blur or other effects.

You'll need to install the 'Tall, Dark, and Handsome' font

Now we’ll create the layout for our clock. Tap “Predefined layout” and select “Custom…”, then tap “Custom layout” to open this menu:

Custom layout

Copy the options as above. In English, the top line is “Static text” (just blank); the second line is “Hour (24h)”, “Static text” (just “:”), then “Minute (2 digits)”.
Remember to save your widget’s setting, by tapping Save at the bottom of the main menu.
Continue to create the rest of the widgets for Screen 1. Alternatively, unzip the MTPrefs zip file and copy all mtprefs files to this folder: /sdcard/MinimalisticTextPreferences They will look like this on your sdcard: /sdcard/MinimalisticTextPreferences/OG_clock
Now position the widgets, until your screen looks like this:

Screen 1, with widgets

Next, set up Screen 2:

Screen 2, with widgets. 'Porto' is my location.

Opening an App With a Widget

That red “N” in the above screenshot is a 1×1 Minimalistic Text widget with static text and color set to transparent. It shows the “N” because it will be a widget to open a designated app.
Here’s how: in the settings for that widget, under Tap behavior, select “Start another activity”.
Then, tap “Select an activity or a shortcut”, and then select an app from your list of apps – in my case, I’ll make it open Pulse News.

Remember: always save your widget configurations, for later revisions.

Now let’s get over to the computer.

Putting It All Together

In Photoshop (or any image editing program), draw the graphics to fit around the widgets. You will find this much easier if you use a screenshot of your screens (with the widgets) as a guide.
Here’s what mine look like:
Screen 1:

Click to see full-size

Screen 2:

Click to see full-size

Upload the finished wallpapers to your phone, and change the MP Live Wallpaper settings to use these wallpapers instead of the basic templates we had before.
That’s it – you will now have your own amazing “One Goal” home screens!

The final result

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy One Goal!

How to back up apps on your Android phone

A quick tutorial on how you can back up all the apps from your Android phone to a safe location on the cloud, your memory card or your PC – for both rooted and non-rooted handsets

Since the Google Android platform does not come with a desktop client, backing up important data can become a little difficult. Thankfully, there are enough apps to help you get the job done, be it on a cloud server or on your phone or computer’s memory. Here’s how you can back up your apps easily.
While non-rooted Android phone owners can back up the apps installed on their phone, they can only do so partially. However, rooted Android handset owners can do a complete backup of their installed apps.

For Non-Rooted Handsets

The My Backup Pro app allows users to easily back up their installed apps, but without the app data. This means that when you restore the backup, the app will appear as a new installation without any of your previous settings saved.
Step 1 – Download My Backup Pro from the Android Market. The free version requires root access, so users need to buy the paid version of the app.
Step 2 – The first time you start it, the app requires users to fill in their email ID, name, and a password for the online cloud storage account. Fill in all the details, and then press Ok.

Step 3 – Now, select the ‘Backup’ option.
Step 4 – From the list that comes up select the ‘Data’ option.
Step 5 – Now, specify where you want to save the backed up data – on the cloud or on your phone’s mass storage – and then select Ok.
Step 6 – The app will then backup all your apps on your specified location.  You’re done!
Step 7 – To restore apps from My Backup Pro, simply use the ‘Restore’ option and follow the steps to restore the backed up data from where you just saved it.

For Rooted Handsets

If you have rooted your Android phone, then you can use the more powerful Titanium Backup to back up all your apps and its related data. There is a free version as well as a paid version of Titanium Backup available for download in the Android Market.
Step 1 – Before anything, make sure that you enable ‘USB Debugging’ option on your phone (Settings-> Applications-> Development).
Step 2 – Download the free or the paid version of Titanium Backup from the Android Market.
Step 3 – Start Titanium Backup and grant root access to the app by selecting ‘Yes’, when the Superuser box prompts up.
Step 4 – Select the ‘Backup/Restore’ tab on the top. Titanium Backup will then show you a list of all the system apps, and the apps you have installed. You can then either back up each app manually by selecting them, and then selecting the ‘Backup!’ option or all of them at once.

Step 5 – To back up all your installed apps at once, press the menu button and then select the ‘Batch’ option.
Step 6 – Now, select the first option under the Backup category – ‘Backup all user apps’ – by pressing Run.
Step 7 – Titanium Backup will now show you the list of all the apps you have installed. Select which apps you want to backup, and when done, simply tap the ‘Run The Batch Operation’ option. The app will then backup all your apps on your phone’s memory card.
Step 8 – To restore your backed up apps with Titanium Backup, simply navigate to the Backup/Restore tab, select the ‘Batch’ option by pressing the menu button, and then select the ‘Restore missing apps with data’ option from under the Restore category.
IMPORTANT: It is highly recommended that users do not backup their system apps or settings from Titanium backup. It might lead to incompatibilities and may affect your phone’s stability.