Building a theme means going back and forth quickly between the editor and the screen. Recalbox gives you everything needed to never reboot.
Plug a keyboard into the Recalbox and press ALT + F5. Every texture is released, then the theme is fully reloaded and re-interpreted, exactly as at startup. You immediately see the result of your changes.
That is the only shortcut you need day to day. Since the theme is read from scratch, variables, conditions and includes are re-evaluated every time.
If you edit your files from another computer over the network share, make sure your editor has actually flushed to disk before pressing
ALT+F5.
Every theme error is written to a dedicated file:
/recalbox/share/system/logs/themes.log
That file should be your first reflex when something does not show up. It records in particular:
Unknown element of type "...");Unknown property type "...");if conditions, with the position of the problem.Each message recalls the file concerned and the include chain leading to it, which lets you find the offending line even in a theme split across dozens of files.
The MAIN MENU > USER INTERFACE SETTINGS > THEME menu shows the theme name, its version, and the list of your <subset> options. If an option you declared does not appear here, the <subset> or its <include> tags are not being read — check themes.log.
When activating a theme, Recalbox compares the compatibility, resolutions and recalbox attributes of your theme.xml against the real machine, and displays a detailed warning on mismatch. It is a good way to verify those attributes are correct.
RRGGBBAA format themes expect.For any question about theme creation, or to have your work reviewed, join the Recalbox Discord.