Nicholas Chum, one of the core developers of the Substratum Theme Engine has recently introduced Rootless Substratum Theme Engine Release 600. Check out their Substratum Theme Engine Development Thread over at XDA-Developers Forum. He also lists some of the new features included that are listed below.
Substratum Theme Engine now Rootless Officially with Release 600
New Features Included in the ROOTLESS Substratum Theme Engine :
- Completely brand new icons and animations, made by +Kevin Aguilar and +Anthony Nguyen
- Rootless, completely sandboxed. This means that the WHOLE APP does not touch anything on your device anymore other than internal storage for Interfacer to install applications on. Huge credits to +Ivan Iskandar (for integrating changes to Interfacer, Substratum and platform!), +George G., +Randall Rushing, +Surge Raval and many contributors in our [experimental.] chat!
- Streamlined the UI much more, introducing color previews in the Overlay Manager!
- Introducing, #FloatUI! Now you can toggle your overlays from any screen possible! (On Android N, there is an API bug where the foreground app MAY bug out to Substratum when a notification comes in. If it does, just toggle it back) [FloatUI needs additional permissions]
- Changed the strings to make more sense to the common user
- Redesign the Substratum Showcase UI thanks to +Alex Cruz!
- Favorites icon actually gets saved and can be removed now for app shortcut
- Added community links to the navigation drawer for new resources from the community, featuring TheCyberFibre/XDA Portal of Punya Vashist, theme template redirects, Gerrit redirects and direct links to our G+, Telegram chat and XDA support thread!
- Masquerade is now known as Theme Interfacer, reverse compatibility for ROOT-OMS7 has been dropped in its entirety.
- Users are no longer allowed to switch to AOPT (Cutting Edge) due to the nature of it being completely volatile in our development.
- Fixed an issue where there are some cases where themes will be uninstalled when updating from Play Store.
- Added a new changelog button for themers to utilize when launching their themes.
- Due to the sandboxed nature of Substratum, everything is MUCH FASTER than ever before. Overlays compile 2-3x faster including install time (depending on your device).
- Rootless Substratum means that we have dealt with everything in the platform end — meaning this is SELinux Enforcing ready, with Bootloader Lock and such.
- The app has been completely optimized, when you first launch it, you will realize how fast it is now!
- Substratum now saves your position during a window refresh, so when you’re enabling/disabling an overlay in Advanced Manager, it will not kick you back to home.
- Notifications now refrain your SystemUI from going into haywire mode, updating X amount of times – where X is the file % 200 count. This will allow the user enough time to be able to click the cancel button to stop the cache creation process.
- We only have two tiles now, Substratum Tile and FloatUI tile.
- Security mode for ROMs that ONLY want to enforce release-key Substratums! Meaning that if you install a debug key version of Substratum, it will be denied. This is toggleable in your Developer Options > Force Authorize every theme app.
- The app will request for Theme Plugin Mode the first time you start. It would be HIGHLY RECOMMENDED to use 6.0.0+ plugin as the algorithm there is MUCH CLEANER. But you can obviously use the old algorithm – if you don’t mind it being a bit IO heavy for your legacy themes.
- Supports the latest 7.0.2+ Theme Plugins for themers!
- New languages added: Czech, Polish, Belarusian – all other translations updated
I have just tested the Rootless Substratum Theme Engine and have to say that it works amazingly well. Building and Enabling the overlays of the theme is much more faster than before. Also, the FloatUI looks amazing.
Check out their GitHub page for more info on development. The ROM that you are running on your phone must have the OMS7 Rootless commits for you to run Substratum in Rootless Mode. ROM Developers will soon implement the OMS7 Rootless on their ROMs with the March Security Update. Also, Check out our guide on How to Theme your Android with Substratum Theme Engine.
Let us know in the comments below of your experience with Rootless Substratum Theme Engine.