Phones running on Android 12 can extract colors from the applied wallpaper and then distribute these colors across the UI and supported apps. But it limits exactly how much you can customize your phone. Until now. Let’s take a look at how you can choose your own custom colors in Android 12.
The Problem With Android 12 Customization
Although pretty exceptional at what it does, the Monet theme engine falls short in some regards. For starters, Android 12 only gives you a couple of color palettes to choose from. Credit where it’s due, the colors that the system extracts are often very accurate and match well with the wallpaper.
While this might suit people who like having a consistent theme all around, some of us would appreciate the ability to choose an accent color of our own to be dispersed around the system UI. Android 12 does have a few “base colors” that you can use to override the colors in your wallpaper, but they are scanty, to say the least.
Fortunately, Android is an operating system of many workarounds and there’s an app for everything.
Use LWP+ to Select a Custom Accent Color
LWP+ is a live wallpaper app built specifically to tackle this issue and enable people to select any accent color on their Android 12-based phones.
The way the app works is quite simple, yet brilliant. It disguises itself as one of the many live wallpaper apps for Android, granting itself certain permissions to tweak system colors. You can then select any accent color of your choice and the app fools the Monet engine into thinking that the applied wallpaper has dominant shades of the selected color.
Download: LWP+ (Free)
To set up custom system-wide accent colors:
Launch the app and tap on Import home-screen wallpaper to bring in your current backdrop for customization. Alternatively, you can choose a new wallpaper from your phone’s storage by tapping Wallpaper type and selecting the Cropped image option. Once you have your desired wallpaper loaded in, scroll down and enable the Use custom colors toggle. Select a primary color of your choice. This will be the main accent color you’ll see in and around the system UI. You can also pick a secondary and tertiary color. 3 Images Close After you’ve selected the colors, tap on the Set as current live wallpaper toggle and select Set wallpaper.
Your Android 12 phone should now reflect the newly selected accent color throughout the UI. You can use this app alongside other great customization apps for Android to completely overhaul the way your phone looks.
Since this is a live wallpaper app, we understand any concerns that you may have regarding battery life. However, during the time I tested the app, I noticed no substantial change in my phone’s battery level.
Enjoy Custom Colors Across Apps
With a growing number of devices receiving Android 12, developers have been adopting Material You guidelines to allow their apps to play well with the system-wide accent color. Using this workaround, you can force even the third-party apps to adapt to any accent color of your preference.
