[Update: Out] Official Builds Of Dirty Unicorns 12.0 Are Coming This Friday

UPDATE March 11, 2018 03:52PM IST (Please refer to the end of the article for the update)

After several weeks of testing and bug fixing, Dirty Unicorns have announced that they will be releasing the first set of their official builds on Friday. In their blog post, Dirty Unicorns detailed on how unlike previous years, things went according to plan for DU 12.0. Dirty Unicorns' lead developer Alex Cruz, who penned the blog post, wrote:

This cycle has been special for us because we felt like we were in complete control of it. What we mean by that is that in the past we felt pressured in more than one way to do certain things. Whether that meant that our peers were doing something and so we had to go along with certain things or users just started depending XYZ feature(s), we’ve done things that in retrospect wasn’t exactly a good idea.

This time around was different. We didn’t feel like we were rushing anything and/or trying to keep up with any other project. We did things right the first time around and really felt like all our planning paid off. We did a lot of planning! Probably too much planning but too much is better than none at all. We feel 100 percent satisfied with what we’ve accomplished so far. Learning from past mistakes has kind of been our theme this cycle and we hope to improve even more! Things will only continue to get better! 

Dirty Unicorns 12.0 includes new features such as Fruity Pebbles, Font Manager and the updated Pulse. Fruity Pebbles is similar to Paranoid Android's Color Engine, but it's way better. Fruity Pebbles allows a user to change the background color and the system accent color on the fly. There are twenty accent colors to choose from, and the background color can either be set to as light or dark (note: dark theme won't set the background color to as black). In AOSP Oreo 8.1, the background color switches to light or dark depending upon the wallpaper. Dirty Unicorns have provided an option to either automatically change the background color or set it to as light or dark irrespective of the wallpaper. For now, Fruity Pebbles is limited to theming the system components like the Settings menu and the quick settings panel. Alex Cruz has said that Fruity Pebbles might be expanded to theme system apps in the future. It's worth noting here that Dirty Unicorns no longer support rootless Substratum. To theme via Substratum, users would need to make use of Andromeda. To know more on how to theme using Andromeda, check out XDA's detailed guide here.

As the name suggests, Font Manager will allow you to choose from a variety of fonts. DU 12.0 will ship with nine fonts on-board, with Roboto being the default font. There are plans for a DU font, but  Friday's builds will most likely have the fonts shown in the above screenshot. Although DU 12.0 doesn't support rootless Substratum, optimizations have been made for Substratum overlays that provide a font.

Pulse is a part of the Dirty Unicorns Interface (DUI) package which also comprises of Smartbar and Fling. Pulse are music visualizers which are displayed in the navigation bar when audio (or video) is being played. In DU 12.0, the colors of Pulse will be determined from that of the album art. Android Oreo has native support for colored notifications which sets the background color of a media playing notification based on that of the album art. For the new Pulse, the Dirty Unicorns team have utilized the same API that is used for colored notifications. The colors of Pulse and the media playing notification will henceforth match.

The devices which will be supported officially include Nexus 5, Nexus 6, Nexus 6P, OnePlus 3/3T, OnePlus 5/5T, Pixel C, Pixel 2 XL, Moto G5 Plus and HP Touchpad. 

In contrast to other custom ROM projects, Dirty Unicorns support only a limited number of devices. The DU team have their reasons for doing so. They wish to "maintain a great user experience" and to ensure that they only support the devices they own. Also, Dirty Unicorns add members to their team once in a long while. As a result, only a handful of devices are accorded the 'official' status. 

The one thing that Dirty Unicorns fans have constantly been asking for is official support for more devices, which can only happen if Dirty Unicorns add new maintainers to their team. That's gonna happen soon. After the following Friday, Dirty Unicorns will start accepting applications for new maintainers. The panel of Nathan Chancellor, Mark Rhodes and Mat Pls will select a handful of applicants for the DU team. After the new maintainers are announced, their devices will be supported officially.

You will be able to find the download links and installation instructions for DU 12.0 on Friday at Devs-Base, website of Dirty Unicorns and the DU Google+ community. 

UPDATE March 11, 2018 03:52PM IST

Official builds are now out. You can grab them from here. Dirty Unicorns recommend using Google application packages of Open Gapps. However Dirty Unicorns have uploaded their own Gapps packages (ARM + ARM64), which you can find here. You would need to do a clean flash, otherwise the ROM won't boot. Also ensure that your device is unencrypted.

If you run into issues, you can report them on JIRA with logcat. Feature requests can also be made via JIRA. Interested maintainers can apply for official status from here.

Source: Dirty Unicorns

[All images are courtesy of Dirty Unicorns]

Krittin Kalra

Krittin Kalra is a 20 year old Android freak. Striving for passions, chasing down his dreams and living a life without regrets is his sole mantra. A bit moody, he also does custom ROM reviews for AndroGuider. Currently pursuing his B.Tech, he aspires to follow his heart.