Modding will look a very heavy word and you will think “It maybe difficult, I can’t do”. Well, if you are considering to mod N9/N950’s MeeGo, it’s quite easy than you expect. You will need to know CSS to do so. Yes, CSS. And you require some courage also. 😉

I was playing with my N9 and was looking at system files and found out that UI uses CSS for styling. I am not much sure if there are other things that need for more modding but you can surely change the styling of a page by editing its style.

I am giving you brief tutorial how you can modify MeeGo UI.

#ff0000;">Warning: This post is only for learning purpose and if anything goes wrong with your device, we are not responsible for it. Do it at your own risk.

First of all you need to enable Developer Mode from Settings>Security>Developer Mode. Now you can either use Terminal of your phone or use SSH to access it on PC. I recommend SSH from PC for ease of editing.

How to get access from PC using SSH

You need to download PuTTY. Now connect your N9 with PC using WLAN. You will need to get password for developer account from SDK Connection which will have come after you have enabled developer mode. Open it, select WLAN and note down the IP and passsword.

You now need to connect to N9 from PC using SSH.



Now use the information as shown in above screenshot with the IP your got in SDK Connection app.

Check following commands:

Now you will get a prompt to enter login. Use developer and password is what you have got in your SDK Connection. You have now successfully logined but you don’t have root access , so you cannot modify needed files. You need to gain root access. So type devel-su and it will ask for password. rootme is default password.

Now you have full root access. You can do what you want. Now go to the theme directories. Use the command you see in above screenshot. Now , that meegotouch directory will have all those directories that represent UI style of a particular page or application. Now goto any directory, you want to modify the UI of, and under style, you will see a CSS file. Open it, edit it and play with it. 😉

For example you want to modify Camera UI. Check out following commands:



You need to edit camera-ui.css. You can use vi editor or nano editor (needs to be installed from Settings>Security>Developer mode and install Utilities). Here is a glimpse of what camera-ui.css looks a like.



It is always better to backup the original file before editing it, in case you mess something up.

You can also edit those files explicitly and put them in those directories overwriting the original files. Just learn some basic linux commands.

Keep Mind Cool

It maybe possible that you mess up something and make things worst. Just keep mind cool and replace edited files with original ones. If nothing fixes it, you can flash your N9 (very very less probability of the need of flashing).

I messed up my N9 while modding the keyboard. The issue rose up that Keyboard wasn’t showing up. At that time, I wasn’t using PuTTY from PC but in terminal on my phone. Thus, I made my almost unusable as there was no keyboard and I can’t revert back to original keyboard because there was no keyboard and so I can’t type any commands in terminal on phone. In frustration I forgot about SSH and reset the phone and clear the device making things worst! Later I realized I can get IP of phone by SDK Connection and developer account’s password to login into terminal using SSH. Finally, I fixed it.

All I want to say from this is, keep the mind cool when such shit happens and don’t panic in such situations because there is always a solution. 🙂

Happy Modding

Start modding and don’t forget to share what you did with your MeeGo device(s). 😉 If you have any doubt or problem, just post in comments or contact us at @NokiaTips on twitter. We are always happy to help you.

Kishan Gor Kishan Gor is a Co-Founder of NokiaTips. He is Software Developer by profession and have a great passion for Programming and Gadgets.

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