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Themes - Extending

Creating a custom theme

A complete theme can be generated from a single brand color. Feed that color into the theme builder and all supporting colors, light and dark variants, elevation surfaces, and contrast levels are derived automatically — the result is a theme that fits the customer's or organization's graphical profile and works well across all states.

Step 1 - Generate the theme

Open the Theme Builder. The embedded Material Theme Builder allows setting a source color (or uploading a logo to extract one) and previewing the resulting theme in light and dark mode. Export the finished theme as a Colors.xml file.

Step 2 - Import into WideQuick

On the same Theme Builder page, scroll down to Parse Theme into WideQuick format:

  1. Select the project's Themes.kdat file. This file is located in the project folder (WideQuick_MOD/).
  2. Select the Colors.xml file exported from the Theme Builder.
  3. Click Merge new theme into existing themes file.
  4. Download the updated Themes.kdat.

Replace the existing Themes.kdat in the project folder with the downloaded file. If WideQuick Designer® was open, restart it. The new theme appears under the Themes branch in the project tree and can be set as the start theme.

What M3 generates automatically

When a theme is generated through M3, the following are derived automatically:

  • Light and dark variants — both are produced from the same source color.
  • Surface tonal hierarchy — a set of surface levels (surfaceContainerLowest through surfaceContainerHighest) that convey elevation without shadows.
  • Contrast variants — medium and high contrast versions of each role for accessibility compliance.
  • Color relationships — all on* colors (e.g., onPrimary, onSurface) are calculated to meet contrast requirements against their background color.

This means that even a heavily customized theme remains legible and visually balanced across all its states.

Built-in themes

The following themes ship with WideQuick MOD and are available in the project's Themes.kdat:

Theme Variant
WQ_Material_BMS_Light Light
WQ_Material_BMS_Dark Dark
WQ_Material_VA_Light Light
WQ_Material_VA_Dark Dark
WQ_Material_MF_Light Light
WQ_Material_MF_Dark Dark

These can be used as-is or as a starting point when building a custom theme. The BMS, VA and MF variants differ in their primary and secondary brand colors but share the same M3 structure.