Tips & Tricks: How to Modify/Change the Yahoo! Email Icon on the BlackBerry Bold

Editors note: I did not even know about this little hack. Michael Jones was kind enough to offer instructions on how to perform this little trick.

This is really for all those AT&T Bold users out there – who likes the Yahoo! email icon on their BlackBerry? Show of hands? Anyone? [crickets chirping] That’s what I thought.

Sorry, but I don’t use Yahoo! email anymore, unless I want to know where to buy wee-wee enhancement drugs, get rich today, or lose 50 pounds in a week, (or read other spam), because I get about 150 spam emails a day on my Yahoo! email account. So I haven’t used it for years.

Imagine my surprise when AT&T sold out to Yahoo! to put a Yahoo! icon on my phone, as an email icon, when I don’t use Yahoo! anymore. The BlackBerry was designed to allow the vendor (AT&T) to set this icon themselves, to make a quick buck. See, if RIM embedded the icon inside of the OS, the vendor couldn’t change it. So they made a separate PNG file, (which is like a JPG picture file), that the BlackBerry OS loads when the phone is rebooted.

So I wanted to change this icon. I am not sure if this will work on other devices but it does work on the AT&T Bold. I will show you where the icon file is, on a BlackBerry. First you have to plug your BlackBerry into your USB cable, with Desktop Manager running or not (it is easier if DM is not running, so that it won’t try to sync right now).

When you look at Windows Explorer, it will look something like this:

See drive F:? That is the system drive on my BlackBerry. Think of it like your BlackBerry’s hard drive. The drive below it, G:, is my removable 2GB Micro SD card.

If you navigate through the F: drive (or whatever your BlackBerry drive shows up as, in Windows), you will find the folder with this specific PNG picture file, as seen below:

In the BlackBerry file system, look for this folder, or something like it:

F:\appdata\rim\bda\icons\GBISXNAC02S08\

You will see a *.PNG picture file. In the picture above, it is called 1-80-80.png. If you modify this picture file with a graphics editor program, and replace the file on your BlackBerry, it will load up as the email icon. Before you do anything, you should make a backup copy of the Yahoo! email PNG picture file, on your Windows computer. Then if you don’t like it, you can always go back. Similarly, once you modify this picture file, you should make a backup of the new PNG picture file on your Windows computer, because a new OS install will probably over-write this file.

Here is how you edit the picture file. Think of the picture file as two pictures – one that is seen when the icon does not have focus, and one that is seen when the icon does have focus.

For example, if you put a puppy in the left half of the picture, and a bunny rabbit in the right half of the picture, you would have a puppy for an icon, and when the email application got focus, the puppy would turn into a bunny rabbit. More likely, for the Bold, you would put a picture of an envelope on the left side, and a picture of an envelope with a rounded border around it on the right. That way, when the icon got focus, it would get a rounded box around it (just like the other Bold icons).

The changed icon will be visible when you reboot your BlackBerry, with the Alt+Shift+Delete key sequence. It is loaded fresh, every time you reboot.

Here is that picture file, enlarged for your benefit:

So enjoy, hope this helps, and remember that the OS is looking for this file, in this folder, so don’t forget to have this file in place when you reboot your BlackBerry Bold.

As a disclaimer, I am going to say that you will be doing this procedure at your own risk, and I will not be held responsible for anybody doing this procedure incorrectly. If you don’t feel comfortable doing this, then don’t do it.