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Ambience

Contents

  1. What is an Ambience?
  2. Content of an .ambience file
    1. Ringer tones
    2. Image files
  3. Creating an Ambience
    1. Gallery app
    2. Theme Color app
    3. Manually made RPM package
    4. Command-line
  4. Storage of Settings
  5. Sailfish Browser
    1. Using a dark Ambience

What is an Ambience?

Read more about Ambiences and how to use them.

The system service ambienced will set the Ambience upon boot, or switch to a different Ambience upon request. Ambienced runs as a user service which is started by systemd. The license of Ambienced is proprietary.

Content of an .ambience file

The .ambience file is located under /usr/share/ambience/%name/ where %name is the name of the ambience, for example “my-special-ambience/”. The Ambience file under that directory would be called “my-special-ambience.ambience”.

Parameters in that file can be:

  1. displayName: the name of the Ambience. Should correspondent with the file of the directory and with filename “ambience-%name.ambience” (string).
  2. wallpaper: full filename of the background image, located in “/images”, for example “my-special-ambience.jpg” (string).
  3. primaryColor: the primary color of the Ambience, either in 6 or 8 character color strings for rgba, for example “#FFFFFF” (string).
  4. secondaryColor: the secondary color of the Ambience, either in 6 or 8 character color strings for rgba, for example “#FFFFFF” (string).
  5. highlightColor: the primary color for highlighting of the Ambience, either in 6 or 8 character color strings for rgba, for example “#FFFFFF” (string).
  6. secondaryHighlightColor: the secondary color for highlighting of the Ambience, either in 6 or 8 character color strings for rgba, for example “#FFFFFF” (string).
  7. ringerVolume: the volume for phone ringing, for example 60 (bool.
  8. colorScheme: set it to “lightondark” or “darkonlight” (string).
  9. favorite: list it as favorite under Settings > Ambience in the Sailfish Settings app. For example set it to true (bool).
  10. highlightBackgroundColor
  11. highlightDimmerColor
  12. overlayBackgroundColor
  13. backgroundGlowColor
  14. version: version number of the ambience, for example 3 (integer).
  15. timestamp: the datetime of this version, the format is like “2018-10-24T15:00:00” (string).
  16. translationCatalog

Ringer tones

There are parameters available for ringer tones, though not all users will aprreciate overwriting their custom set ringer tones. The audiofiles need to be under the directory sounds/.

Parameters in the Ambience file can be:

  1. ringerToneFile: { “file”: “Ringtone.wav”, “enabled”: 1 },
  2. messageToneFile: { “file”: “Message.wav”, “enabled”: 1 },
  3. mailToneFile: { “file”: “Email.wav”, “enabled”: 1 },
  4. internetCallToneFile: { “file”: “IM.wav”, “enabled”: 1 },
  5. chatToneFile: { “file”: “IM.wav”, “enabled”: 1 },
  6. calendarToneFile: { “file”: “Calendar.wav”, “enabled”: 1 },
  7. clockAlarmToneFile: { “file”: “Clock.wav”, “enabled”: 1 },

Image files

Image files are placed under images/ and can be for example for an Ambience with the name My Special Ambience:

  1. my-special-ambience.jpg: wallpaper listed in the Ambience file, size should be 2048x2048 pixels.

The file with the name of the ambience will be used as cover image under Settings > Ambience in the settings app.

Creating an Ambience

In the Gallery app when viewing a single image, there is an option to create an Ambience that will use that image as wallpaper and to create the colors automatically derived from that image.

Theme Color app

There is an app developed by developer Nephros that can automatically create an Ambience on your phone, based on user configuration.

The app is available at OpenRepos.net

Manually made RPM package

On OpenRepos.net and in Chum there are several manually created RPM packages that provide an Ambience.

It is also possible to create your own Ambience RPM package.

Command-line

Set image as the ambience:

dbus-send --session --print-reply --dest=com.jolla.ambienced /com/jolla/ambienced com.jolla.ambienced.setAmbience string:"file://home/<user>/Pictures/image.jpg"

Storage of Settings

All ambiences, the built-in ones and those created by the user are managed in an SQLite database at

/home/defaultuser/.local/share/system/privileged/Ambienced/ambienced.sqlite

Settings of the current active Ambience are located in the dconf database at “/desktop/jolla/theme”. These settings can be shown bu running the shell command:

dconf dump /desktop/jolla/theme/

Sailfish Browser

Using a dark Ambience

In the settings for the Sailfish Browser, you can select if the browser should use a light theme, dark theme or follow the Ambience. The dark mode will only work if the website supports a dark theme. It is be possible to create an Ambience that will make the browser follow the theme for dark mode.