This guide will tell you how to Install and Create Custom PS5 Themes.
Introduction
It’s now possible to create custom themes because you now have read-write access to the system ex-directory and some other directories previously with FTP. You could only read files from those directories but not replace any files. Now you can replace files in those directories.
The system ex-directory contains things like the background music on the home screen, your icons, and your background images, so you can now essentially create custom themes for the PS5 by swapping out the files in those directories.
PS5 Partition Mount Setup
1- First, you need to use the Blu-ray Drive exploits because the payload PS5 partition Mountonly works with the Blu-ray Drive exploit right now, which means you need to burn your PS5 elf loader onto a blank or rewritable Blu-ray disc.
2- You will inject the partition Mount payload, which is going to allow you to read and write to the system ex-directory and some of the other directories. Then you can load the FTP payload afterward so you can actually replace files on the hard drive.
3- Firstly, you need to get a Blu-ray disc that is either a black Blu-ray or a rewritable Blu-ray disc and then download and run image burn to download the image burn. Click on the following link https://www.imgburn.com/index.php?act=download.
4- Once you get the Blu-ray disc, put it into your PC and open the image burn. After that, click on the write image file to disk, take the PS5 elf loader ISO file and drag that over to image burn. Then click the button to write the image file to disk.
5- Then click yes to overwrite if there was any previous data on the disk, then go ahead and write here. If this is a black disk, it will take a while to zero sectors, and once that’s done, it will then write. If it’s a rewritable disk and you’ve already written data to it before, then it will only take a few seconds.
6- Once it’s done, eject the disk and put it into the PS5. Firstly on the PS5, you have to make sure that you got your ps5’s IP address. For this, click on the settings button at the top right corner of the screen, then go to System and select system software. Click on Console information, and you will get your ipv4 address.
7- Once you’ve got your ps5’s IP and then run the disk player, a message will appear which says that “it’s successfully escaped the BSD jail”.
8- Now, switch over to the desktop and run the netcat GUI, enter the ps5’s IP address in the IP Box and the port number 9020. Then drag the PS5 partition Mount payload and inject the payload if it says done, then it has been sent successfully. To download the Mount Payload click on the following link https://gameskeysstorage.b-cdn.net/PS5%20Partition%20Mount.zip.
9- Once it is done, you won’t notice anything on the PS5. It should be the same. After that, take the FTP payload, drag it in, and click inject payload. If you switch over to the PS5, it should pop up a message with this one saying PS5 listening on and then the ps5’s IP address.
Installing Custom Themes
1- Now you can connect an FTP. For this, use FileZilla, you can use WinSCP can use FTP within Windows itself, then put the IP address here in the host box 192.168.1.34, and the port number is 1337. Press the Quick Connect button, and then you will have read-write access to all the directories added in FileZilla.
2- Now go to the root directory and install the Watchdogs theme. To download the Watchdogs Theme, click on the following link https://gameskeysstorage.b-cdn.net/PS5%20Theme%20Files.zip. Once it is downloaded, open the folder, and you will get the pre inst folder that just contains fonts, then you will also have the system ex folder. Now take these two folders and copy them directly into the root directory.
3- When you copy these into the root directory, a Window will pop up. Select the “Always use this action” option because it should only be fonts and images that get replaced in the system ex-directory, not any critical files, but you might want to check depending on the theme that you’re downloading you might want to double check to make sure it is just image files and then click on OK.
4- Now switch back over to the PS5. Now you might notice some weirdness happen here when you first install it, so if I press the PS button to go back, you get a black screen, so this happens. This is good, it is the same thing that happens on the PS4 when you first install a theme.
5- Now it’s kind of reloading everything if you get the error something went wrong with the system software, you just click ok, and then we should have everything refreshed there, and the theme has successfully been installed.
6- All your fonts have changed, and your custom images, as you can see, are also changed you might also be able to hear a different scroll sound, and your background and select sound have been changed as well with custom sound effects.
Making A Custom Theme
1- First, switch back over to the desktop, then go back into the disc player this particular version of FTP with the Blu-ray disc and isn’t-persistent, so when you go back into the whole menu, you will not be able to place files, you have to go back into the disk player again in order for FTP to work.
2- You can use the persistent FTP in the WebKit if you prefer to go back into the disc player to do some customs, you have to download some assets, including some pictures and also including background images for the Custom theme.
3- You will also need some background music that you can use as the home menu background, so you can use that music as the whole menu background music and then also the PS1 boot-up sound, which you can use as the kind of login sound or the boot-up sound for the PS5.
For App image
4- First, replace one of the app Images to use the disk player app image and replace it with your avatar picture. So to do that, you can go into the system exI folder on FileZilla, then go to the app, then go to mpxs40140, and here you will see a bdmv player, so that is the disk player.
5- Now, go into the SCE system folder. You can see the icon that’s already there; drag that out, and you can see it is the disk player icon, so all you need to do is rename your picture to Icon 0.png needs to be a PNG image, and the size should be 512 by 512 pixels then replace it with the original file.
For Background image
6- For the background image, you will find background images in the vsh_asset folder here; you will see all the background images for different apps and then the default background image.
7- So if there isn’t an image associated with an app, it will use the default one, so you can change the default one. For this, rename it and then copy it. You need to ensure that the background images are in the DDS format, which is direct draw surface you can use a program called paint.net which is free to convert images to DDS formats, or you can use probably Photoshop and other image editing software, so go ahead and rename this to the background.DDS copies it over to replace the original image.
for Disk Player App
8- For the disk player app, go into the npxs40110, and you can check by looking at the PS5 default images. You can swap them out according to your choice.
9- Now, switch back over to the console, then go back to the home menu, and hopefully, it will refresh automatically if it doesn’t refresh automatically, go into settings and just load up the user guide, especially if you’re using the WebKit FTP so if you run an app or you run the webkit and then exit that will refresh your images on the home screen.
10- Then you can see if your changes have been applied correctly, then you will get the background image and the icon image swapped out successfully, and the disk player image is changed.
For Music conversion
11- For converting the music to work on the PS5, you need to use an 89 converter as you used for the PS4 and PS Vita. Copy the background music that you want to use into the same folder as the executable, then run it drag and drop the file on top of the wif file or MP3 file then, select PS4 and then select 144 or lower bitrate anything above 144 seems to Output a file with zero bytes so usually use 144 or lower and then convert it.
12- You have to do the same thing with this PS1 boot-up sound, and you will get 89 files. So copy those back over, and now you have converted them to the format that will work on the PS5.
13- They’re again right here in the VHS asset folder on Filezilla. You have bgm home.89, which is your home menu background music, so just rename whatever music you want to use as bgm home and then replace it, and then your background music is changed.
14- Then, for the login music or the bootup music is the sfx cold boot there’s also the initial boot, transition, and warm boots, so you can swap them all out with the same audio file if you wish. Now you have replaced the login music and the home menu music.
15- If you want to check that it worked so, go back to Ps and then go into settings then go down to sound, and then go to the audio output and turn ON the home screen music as you can hear, the music is different it’s no longer the Watchdogs theme.
Other Settings
1- There are also icons inside these files on Filezilla, so this particular file SCE PlayStation Pui_ui3.rcoso is basically like a compressed file that contains icons and sound effects, so that’s where your sound effects are, and your like settings icons that you can swap out if you want to.
2- For this, you need to use a program here called cxml decompiler, and you can use this program to decompile these rco files into the raw assets, and then you can just swap them out.
3- The audio files are in the vag files, so like snd entries, your selected sound is in the home screen. Then there’s snd cancel which is your circle sound in the home screen, and then there’s also one called snd Focusmove it’s called there and focus move, and that’s your scroll sound so you can swap those files out.
4- You need to convert them to a vag file just take a WAV file and convert it to vag with the fake package tools have a vag converter that you can use.
Fix HDD Corruption
1- If your accident corrupts anything in the system directories because if you do accidentally delete a critical operating system file, then you will not be able to boot back into your PS5, which is very scary when that happens if you accidentally do that to fix it, all you need to do is head to a website: https://darthsternie.net/ps5-firmwares/ From here download the firmware version that your PS5 is currently.
2- Get a USB drive formatted in xfat or FAT32 format. Create a folder in the root of the drive called PS5 in uppercase characters, and then inside that folder, you create another folder called update, also in uppercase characters, and then copy the update file inside the update file should be called ps5update.pup again in uppercase characters.
3- After that, plug that USB into the PS5, then hold down the power button until it beeps twice to turn the PS5 on. It will boot you into safe mode. From the safe mode, you choose the update system software option and then choose update from the USB drive and then check to make sure it’s the correct firmware version that matches the firmware that your PS5 is currently on. If it is, then click on OK.
4- As it will just reinstall the same firmware version that’s already installed on your system, which will fix the hard drive files, it’ll also reset your theme back to normal, and it will get your system booted up again because it will fix any corruption that you’ve caused in the system directories without deleting any of your stuff, so you’ll still have all your games installed in your save files.