Welcome to the second installment of "There's a Patch for That." Patches are modifications (tweaks) that add key features to existing Palm applications. For instance, have you wished for message forwarding or landscape mode for messaging, email, or PDF's? Do you wish the Palm Pre webOS had other key features? Pre users have developed over 60 patches to make these and other wishes a reality!
In There's a Patch for That (Part 1) we saw 14 of our favorite patches including the On Screen Keyboard, LED Notification, Launcher, and Email patches. Now we will explore patches that customize alerts and notifications, as well as the Messaging, Calendar, Contacts, and Phone Apps. Note that the hundreds of Homebrew Apps are separate programs, not patches.
The Getting Started: Homebrew Apps, Patches, and Themes guide shows you how to install and remove patches. For a list of patches, see Patches. As always, the usual warnings apply. You're patching system webOS files, so stuff can break here. For many Pre users, though, the risk is well worth the reward. (See: How to Revive a Pre.)
Here are more of our favorite patches...
All the Bells and Whistles
First up on today's patch tour are patches that allow you to customize your message and alert sounds. Of these patches, SMS Tone Per Contact gives you the most flexibility including new options in Sounds and Ringtones to set your own Alert and Notification sounds (much like My Notification).
In fact, you can choose two different sounds as in this example, Crickets and Crickets2. (People make the funniest faces when they hear Crickets!) This patch also lets you set a different alert sound for each contact as well as custom ringtones! (To restore the default Alert and Notification sounds, install My Notification and tap the My Notificaion menu and then tap Reset Defaults.)
Messaging Patches
Next up on the patch tour are some of the Messaging patches. How about the Character Counter patch so that you know how many characters you have used of the 160 character limit?
Take a look at the screenshot below. Can you spot the two patches here?
OK, the obvious one is the avatar circled in red. That is the Add an Avatar tweak from the webOS Quick Install that allows you to select a 32x32 PNG image as your avatar. Also, notice how the time is shown for each message. The example above is also using the "Messaging Timestamp Builtin" patch. Other options include the Messaging Timestamps - Clean patch.
There's a Smile For That
A fun patch for messaging and emails is the Smiley Faces in Symbol Box patch. Once installed, press and hold the Sym key and then K or Sym and Z for two fun sets of emoticon smiles.
Phone a Friend
Users have developed extraordinary patches for the Pre's Phone app as well. In some areas, you might get better service (and battery life) if you can force the Pre to always be in Roam mode. The Enable Roam Only Option patch gives you a new Roam Only option in the Phone App's Preferences menu under Network:
Another cool patch addresses the situation where you get a call that just shows the number but has no contact or caller ID name. You can still see at least the state with the Match State to Area Code patch:
Next up is the Call History During Call patch. This patch adds a Call History option in the drop down menu during a call. (We don't know who "Jennifer" is in this screenshot, but we would like to meet her! And who is that Dieter guy?)
Another favorite is the No Alert During Call patch that will disable alerts during a call and re-enable them automatically when you hang up. Maybe the most popular phone patch of all is the "Enable Dial Pad Vibration" patch which also silences the dial pad tones!
So far we have explored just 28 of the 70+ great patches that are available. There are so many amazing patches that they just could not fit into even two articles. The last installment in this series, There's a Patch for That! (Part 3), is out! Also see There's a Patch for That (Part 1).
Craig Lincoln, aka Milominderbinder, is a moderator on the PreCentral forums and the developer of the Palm Pre Tips and Tricks. Craig's recent articles include Music Player (Remix), There's a Patch for That (Part 1), Part 2, and Part 3, and Getting Started: Homebrew Apps, Patches, and Themes.
PS If you need help, please post your request in the forums such as webOS Quick Install, Preware, or Patches
Comments
favorite patch is the call duration and email reply in black
My favorite out of the above mentioned patches are "Enable Dial Pad Vibration" and "Match State to Area Code"
I havnt tried the SMS Tone Per Contact but I will definetly give it a go and see what kind of cool sounds are available. Anyone know when there will be an APP or Patch to create your own ringtone from a portion of a song?? Like the in the middle of the hook instead of just the begining of the song??? If not theres something I'd be interested in...
Some great patches out there!! Thanks guys for everything yall do!!
You already can do all that. It takes a little bit of work but you can download a program free from the net and add your clip of any song in the world to your palm pre "sounds folder". Good luck and have fun.
"Paml Pre"???
how about the ability to answer a call with speakerphone, without having to hit anwer, and then speaker, very annoying while driving.
i love that idea. did u suggest it in the patch sub-forum?
of course not
i've installed a majority of the patches. patching is the advantage this phone has over all other devices. i mean, i know you can jail break an iphone, but cant you brick those things too? we have the doctor for that, and also, palm isnt standing in our way.
I would like a more robust dictionary/predictive typing. When I had the old 700P didn't now what I was missing. Since the 800W & Treo Pro days, I've been spoiled. & making a lot of spelling errors.
I also find patching very useful. So far, Virtual Keyboard is my favorite, but as with everything nothing is perfect.
The iPhone spoof patch failed with WebOS 1.21, but I'm looking forward to it return. Actually, I've had problems w/some patches and after a long wait adding and removing problem items ended up using the latest WebOS repair to start over fresh. BTW, Palm's latest WebOS repair for 1.21 now works in Roaming...big sigh of relief!!!
Either way, I love patching and tend to wait for other users advice before trying things that are new, since experimenting can also bring things to a halt.
Looking forward to apps that provide complete backups of the system and media storage so we can backup everything before hand to test new patches, tweaks, os otherwise. Sorli...
Can anyone help me out? I installed the virtual keyboard through pre-ware and accidentally restarted my pre without removing the patch. Now it will not let me re-install the keyboard (keeps coming up as having an error). Any help would be greatly appreciated.
http://forums.precentral.net/palm-pre/206807-official-1-2-1-patch-discussion.html
- Craig
Thanks for your response. I ran the repair scan and it did not come up with anything for me to fix. I tried to patch the virtual keyboard again and it is coming up with the same thing. It says (offline root mode: not running org.webosinternals.patches.add-onscreen-keyboard.prerm). Any suggestions would be great.
i have at least 25 of the 60+ patches installed.. i love this device!
hi
after changing the alert tone, how can I go back to the default alert? It isn't in my ringtones folder and uninstalling the patch didn't help.
http://www.precentral.net/homebrew-apps/my-notification
Tap the My Notificaion menu and then tap Reset Defaults. If you want, you can now delete My Notifications.
- Craig
I have "Select Alert and Notification Tone" patch on my phone... and When I went to uninstall it the stock tone wasn't there, just the one I chose.
Is there anyway to restore the stock alert tone? I do not see it when I choose an alert tone.
iPhone Killer
I don't want to sound like an ass, but if our great homebrew guys can do all this why can't Palm? It just seems like a lot of these patches like, notifications and text forwarding would have came standard or in the first couple updates. What is Palms deal? Are they flaking out hopeing other people will do their work for them?
I agree....I'm not real interested in doing "patches" and stuff like that, is the thought these items will eventually get fixed in updates? I'm the person who would do these simple patches and end up having some error that no one has heard of and be without my phone for a week while it gets corrected. I like most of the patches, but not ready for that adventure......yet.
I'm with you clemgrad85...I would love to download all the patches and tweaks but I'm too stoopid, and I know I would do something wrong and the Pre' would catch on fire or something awful.
I get all excited reading about all the new stuff on the forums, but then I see there are 68 pages of people who are smarter than me with bricked phones......I am not that brave.
The Pre' is still so new that I guess I can wait for Palm to work and hopefully release the cool stuff officially.
Where have you heard of these people? From everything I have found it is impossible or nearly impossible to "BRICK" a Pre using these mods. Even for the cats that upgraded over their tweaks and other what nots.
I would say the small groups of people that have found small glitches when combining some patches, may be why Palm has "hidden" some of these features. When I say glitches I speak of people that didnt come close to "bricking" anything, but maybe lost audible notification when adding the LED notification.
Naaaah aaaah. These guys writing patches are doing a great job!!! I've cracked my phone for quite some time now and we can't wait on palm, we need these guys. I got the baddest phone out of all my friend thanks to these themes, patches, and apps. Thanks to all you creative developers out there. Keep 'em coming.
I don't think that is it. I think there are several issues at play here. First, Palm developers must be under a much more stringent testing and release schedule. Palm can not just be releasing patches like these day after day. Every update that the Palm developers make have to be tested, retested, and then tested some more. While the patches you see do not go through all that testing (although I am sure they undergo some testing). You will see the notice with the patches provided that they are as-is, without warranty, they could be breaking something deep in the bowels of the OS that we do not know yet (I doubt it, but that is always a possibility). In order to meet these schedules Palm must group all their "patches" together into a scheduled update and push them out to every phone, not just those who want them. That in and of itself presents a challenge.
Secondly, it would not surprise me if we see many of these patches come in future updates to webOS. Not that Palm is ripping them off from here, but rather, they are on the development and testing schedule for a future release.
Lastly, I love that we can get these! I think it gives those of us who do not want to wait for the "official" availability of the Palm updates the chance to really make our phones work for us. Having this ability is something that I do not think any other smart phone has, do they?
I agree. I love what the homebrew guys are doing. It's nice not having to wait on Palm. I just wish some of this stuff woulf have come standard. I guess they have to test and test and then test again. I get that.
hey guys, let's remember the word freedom. With this OS system, an open system is freedom for developers. We're not all geniuses so its only relevant that Palm only did so much at first. What we developers can expect is support from Palm. This is the best way to get consumers involved and that's to let the developers dive into this thing. Honestly, do you think if this thing came out perfect that this community would be as strong. I mean, look at the communist state of Apple..they have fans, yes, but no real community or care from Apple. Communist will eventually perish. I am just in excitement, that on Colombus Day, they got rid of that damn partition. God Bless America, give freedom a ring...long live the Pre.
Like the SMS Tone Per Contact patch, could we get a "Email Tone per Contact" patch?
There are some emails that are just more important than others and it would be nice to know when they come in.
Don't forget another huge advantage of Roam Only: greatly improved battery life. When you're phone is constantly searching for a Sprint signal that you know it's never going to find, it uses a ton of juice.
Don't forget the potential negative impact. If you are always on Roam Only, Sprint can charge the bejeezers out of you it...
That depends on what you are roaming to. Sprint has forward and reverse roaming agreements with many (most?) carriers so roam costs nothing on them. But I am not sure if data works on them (since I haven't tried)
I am trying this but discovered that I could not make a backup of the original alert.wav file that was the default.
Does anyone know how to get that back, without doctoring your phone.
And I guess the same goes for the notification.wav file.
Thanks!
Rob
http://www.precentral.net/homebrew-apps/my-notification
Tap the My Notificaion menu and then tap Reset Defaults. If you want, you can now delete My Notifications.
- Craig
Is it possible to dump the original notification tones without installing the SDK? Are they at all accessible from within the device?
http://forums.precentral.net/web-os-development/200441-seperate-sms-tones-each-contact.html
- Craig
I LOVE THIS DEVICE!!! All these tweaks are just f#####g Ridiculous! Thank you, Everyone! Shouts out to PALM for creating this beast of a device, as well.
THE PATCHES ARE GREAT FOR THIS PHONE IT REALLY SHOWS WHAT IT IS CAPABLE OF. STILL WONDERING IS THERE A WAY TO HAVE A CHANGED MESSAGE TONE FOR ALL TEXT MESSAGES INSTEAD OF JUST BY CONTACT, ALSO WANTING TO KNOW ABOUT THE PATCH FOR CONFERENCE CAlls, HAVING THE ABILITY TO HANG UP FROM JUST ONE CALLER OR PICKING WHICH LINE TO HANG UP ON WHEN DONE INSTEAD OF HAVING TO END ALL CALLS. WHO EVER IS MAKING THESE PATCHES YOU ARE DOING A GREAT JOB AND HOW DO I MAKE A DONATIONS. PLEASE LEGIT RESPONSES ONLY!
ALL UPPERCASE IS HOW YOU SCREAM IN A POST.
I hope that you did not mean to scream. :)
The SMS Tone Per Contact patch does let you set a single default for all Text messages. Give it a try!
- Craig
Can someone please help me! I installed a theme but it didnt install the background for the theme and now i cant install new ones from pre ware it says there was an error and the themer from Quick Install wont work either! How can you uninstall themes?
When you install a theme, you need to make sure that you uninstall that theme before you install another, I would bet that is your issue. Try uninstalling the one you installed, then install a new one...
http://forums.precentral.net/palm-pre/206807-official-1-2-1-patch-discussion.html
- Craig
Downloaded the avatar app,im kinda a newb,where can i do this...Thank you
Hi,
does anyone of you guys know how preware/webOS QI will react to the european firmware 1.1.3 ?
Are the tweaks are going to work or do we have to wait for version 1.2.x ?
thanks in advance
bang
I have tried to install the SMS tone per contact patch, but I get an "Error Installing: See IPKG Log"
Anybody know what the issue is and how to fix it?
Im Having The same problem,i uninstalled the previous patches via pre-ware and wed0s quick install..thanks..
"Notification" is email? Text?
"Alert" is ?
"Messages" are ?
Thank you in advance,its driving me crazy
HELPPP ! When trying to download tweaks, well right before when you have to download the ipk stuff or whatever, i get this error box, saying it cannot find a package or something. i'm in a rush so i didn't type everything. But i haven't been able to download any tweaks at all, and i feel out of the loop because of this error.
the only question i have is why didnt i get the messaging option to change the sound when i installed the patch...
How to install Patches:
http://forums.precentral.net/showthread.php?p=1944821
How to use Preware:
http://forums.precentral.net/showthread.php?t=199090
How to use webOS Quick Install:
http://forums.precentral.net/showthread.php?t=203951
- Craig
it's absolutely great that these things exists and people are devoting their time and effort for enhancing the pre experience. but on the other side, I think, most of the patches should not be necessary, as it is about functionality that are standard for most phone years ago. I know, that this has been said before in some comments, but I think it can't be said to often.
the patches are great for the most part. i agree these should have been standard as most phones these days have all these builtin.
i 2nd ricky_0327 - is there a patch that would allow hanging up 1 call and not having to end calls?
so far though i've been told that the receiving end of the smiley's only see the symbols and not the smileys (sent to iphone user and sprint instinct user)
Waiting for a camcorder with sound and playback on the phone. and if possible - focus options on the camera... just wishful thinking.
How to install Patches:
http://forums.precentral.net/showthread.php?p=1944821
How to use Preware:
http://forums.precentral.net/showthread.php?t=199090
How to use webOS Quick Install:
http://forums.precentral.net/showthread.php?t=203951
- Craig
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