Android customization is a huge topic, there are so many different apps that let you change a different parts of your phone. Desktop Visualizer lets you create shortcuts for programs in a variety of different sizes. The basic idea behind it is to create 1×1 shortcuts to run a program using any suitably sized image. So you could easily download an icon pack from the Internet and use it for the icons to your favourite programs. Where this app comes into its own is allowing you to create a variety of different sized horizontal or vertical icons. So you can use 4×1 vertical if you wanted to. If this is all sounding a little bit vague I will show you some screenshots of what can be done.
If you want to use this program you will need to find some icons or some suitable pictures. You can buy icons on the Android Market, create your own or download some free ones. I created some 4×1, 2×2 and 1×1 text icons fairly easily using Photoshop Elements, you can get a very similar result using the free program Gimp on your pc. You can also get programs on the Android Market that slice up existing wallpapers into lots of pieces for you to use. Below is an example of some basic text icons that I created in an afternoon.
There are a lot of threads around on different forums about Desktop Visualizer, If you google “desktop visualizer icons” you will find lots of different icons you can download, quite often they will include the psd file, so you can add your own touch. I have posted links at the end, so you can get the four icon sets from the top of the article.
Once you have your icons or artwork, adding them to the screen is easy. You just add a widget to the screen as normal, Desktop Visualizer has 11 different sizes you can add, pick the size you want, pick the icon you want, pick the program you want it to launch, choose whether to have a text label as well and press ok. If you are using ADW Launcher or Launcher Pro Plus you can resize the widget later on, if you chose the wrong size. One thing that does not work with this app is unread message notifications, so you need to install SMS Unread Count and copy you message or email icon across to the following folder on your sd card “\data\com.kanokgems.smswidget”. You can then add a widget and resize it to either 2×2 or 4×1 as shown above. These shots were all using Launcher Pro Plus, using a 4×5 homescreen grid.
1st Icon set courtesy of Techcredo zip file here
2nd Icon set was found on XDA Developers the orginal thread is here
3rd Icon set was found on Android Forums the original thread is here
4th Icon set was found on XDA Developers the original thread is here
Huge List of Icons on XDA Developers here
that’s the cool app