Custom Themes in Reaper, OSX

Custom Themes in Reaper (OSX)

I usually stick with default themes; in my experience, custom themes usually degrade with time...a release comes out, the original developer no longer has time, the audience isn't quite sure how to maintain.

In the case of Reaper, I have found that track layouts are really oriented around sound / recording sound. 

MIDI isn't quite the focus. I don't need inputs, pan, volume, or any of the more recording oriented buttons that one might use.  So I decided to create a mod to the default theme.

Setup:

Non-Retina MacBook Pro (i7)

OSX 10.8 (Mountain Lion)

Reaper 4.32

1. Themes are stored in the Color Themes folder

Open up a finder window, and from your "home" folder, navigate to:

 ~/Library/Application Support/Reaper/ColorThemes

2. Duplicate the default reaper theme

I am opting to use the default theme as the basis for my mod...but really any mod would do.

I select Default_4.0ReaperThemeZip, Copy (⌘C) and Paste  (⌘V).

3. Rename duplicated theme to .zip

Now that we have a copy of the default theme, we need to modify it!  A theme file is just a zip, so we need to unzip.  First, I rename Default_4.0 copy.ReaperThemeZip to crufty_midi_temp.zip

4. Open .zip file, rename & move contents to ColorThemes folder

Once renamed as a zip fie, I double click on the zip file to 'unpack' the theme folder--this will create a crufty_midi_temp folder. 

 Inside the crufty_midi_temp folder, we find the 4.0 theme we're going to use as the basis for our tweaks.

To reduce conflicts--and I'm not sure if this is required,  but its what I did--I rename the Default_4.0_unpacked folder to crufty_midi.  Default_4.0_unpacked.ReaperTheme gets renamed to crufty_midi.ReaperTheme.

Next, I cut (⌘X) both these items, navigate to the parent Color Themes Folder, and paste (⌘V).  I delete the crufty_midi_temp folder, as well as the crufty_midi_temp.zip file--these are no longer needed.

Done! I now have a baseline for any theme mods I need to make!  I can edit crufty_midi.ReaperTheme in TextEdit to my hearts content.