The boot menu's look

./theme.sh changes a finished stick’s look without rebuilding anything. The choice is kept on the stick, so a refresh doesn’t undo it:

./theme.sh                                  # how it looks now, and what there is to choose
./theme.sh --menu                           # choose from numbered lists, with a preview
./theme.sh --theme midnight                 # a preset: midnight, ember, terminal, slate (default: Helix Neon)
./theme.sh --theme standby                  # the plain one (also --theme off); poly-dark is another
./theme.sh --icons off                      # no icons, just names (--icons grey, --icons badges)
./theme.sh --background ~/pic.jpg --dim 40  # your own picture behind the menu, darkened 40 %
./theme.sh --splash ~/pic.png               # your own picture before the menu (--splash off: none)
./theme.sh --preview out.png --theme ember  # a picture of how it would look; the stick is untouched
./theme.sh --reset                          # back to the default look
./theme.sh --export my-look.zip             # save the look, with your own pictures and icons
./theme.sh --import my-look.zip             # put it on this stick, or a new one

A saved look holds only the choices and pictures, so it’s small. Keep one in case the stick is lost. Loading it onto a stick that lacks its theme uses the default theme and says so. Its icons and splash stay on the stick through updates, unless the updating PC has its own in byo/.

On Windows it is the app’s Look… button, with a live preview, or HelixBoot.exe --look E:\ --theme midnight. Its Save look… and Load look… buttons save and load a look. HelixBoot.sh has it in its menu as Change a stick’s look.

Theme
default	Helix Neon: purple and cyan over the helix artwork
midnight	deep navy with ice blue and cyan
ember	charcoal with orange and amber
terminal	black with phosphor green
slate	plain graphite and steel
standby	black cubes, a power symbol, grey icons; the plain choice (--theme off gives it)
poly-dark	dark polygons and a plain list, in greys

Midnight, Ember, Terminal and Slate are the same menu in other colours, over artwork drawn by theme/build-theme.py, so all of it can be shared. Standby (by Llewelyn Trahaearn, GPL) and Poly dark (by Andrei Shevchuk, MIT) are other people’s GRUB themes with their own layout, adapted for Ventoy. Standby takes the place of Ventoy’s own white look, which theme = "" under [settings] in local.toml still gives.

Icons
auto	the theme’s own style: the icons in colour, or grey on Standby and Poly dark (the default)
logos	the default icons in colour, and yours from byo/icons/
grey	the same icons in shades of grey; a flat one-colour icon turns white
badges	two-letter badges in place of the tools’ icons
off	no icons, just the names

Your own pictures are resized to 1920×1080 with Pillow; without it, a PNG is used as it is. See the theme notes for how the stick stores its look, and for adding a preset or an icon pack of your own.

Your own icons and splash

To give a tool your own icon, save a square PNG as byo/icons/<tool name>.png; byo/icons/cat-<category id>.png replaces a category icon, and Ventoy’s own (vtoyiso, vtoydir, vtoyret for “back”, …) can be replaced the same way. Yours win over a preset’s. Ventoy shows icons at 40×40, and big ones use up its memory at boot so later icons don’t appear: theme/build-theme.py --fit-icons shrinks yours to 40×40, keeping the originals in byo/icons/originals/. A whole set of your own goes in byo/icon-packs/<name>/ and is picked with ./theme.sh --icons <name>. Put icons there, not straight onto the stick: the stick’s theme folder is rebuilt on every refresh.

When the stick boots, a splash shows for about a second before the Ventoy menu, with a loading bar filling up along the bottom: the HELIXBOOT logo over the theme’s artwork, or your own picture saved as byo/splash.png (1920×1080 works best). splash_seconds under [settings] in local.toml sets how long (0 turns it off). The boot loader only counts whole seconds, so the bar is a set of frames drawn one after another, and a slower PC takes a little longer. Refresh makes the frames with Pillow (python-pillow); without it the splash is a still picture. Ventoy has no setting for a splash, so install.sh and refresh.sh add a few marked lines to Ventoy’s own boot script on the stick’s small VTOYEFI partition, and re-add them after a Ventoy upgrade.

The default theme

Helix Neon is purple/cyan DNA artwork, the HELIXBOOT wordmark and a purple selection with a cyan edge. The menu, scrolling, timeout, hotkeys and boot-mode indicators are real Ventoy components; no menu entries are painted into the wallpaper. Lazarus PE keeps its separate green PortableApps theme.

Every tool, category and Ventoy entry has an icon from one glossy set, the HELIXBOOT icon collection, the same on every theme. The icon notes show the set and say how to change an icon or use one of the collection’s extras.

The image above is a layout preview; the screenshots at the top are the real thing. The themes target 1920×1080; other screen modes use Ventoy’s resolution fallback, and longer menus scroll.

The theme lives in theme/. Edit theme.txt for layout, or the colours and text in theme/build-theme.py, and re-run it to regenerate the images, icons, presets and fonts (--skip-fonts reuses the committed fonts). ./refresh.sh then puts it on a stick; no PE rebuild is needed. See the theme notes for rebuilding assets and checking the result on your hardware.

Layout on the stick

ISO/1-Antivirus/  ISO/2-Backup-and-Recovery/  ISO/3-Boot-Repair/
ISO/4-Diagnostic-Tools/  ISO/5-Disk-Wipe/  ISO/6-Live-Operating-Systems/
ISO/7-Partition-Tools/  ISO/8-Password-Removal/  ISO/9-Windows-Recovery/
ISO/OSimages/       your own installer ISOs (never touched; hidden while empty)
Apps/               portable apps, the Helix Apps menu and LazarusStartup.cmd
Apps/Lazarus/       the Lazarus launcher (Lazarus PE's start screen)
HelixBoot/          HelixBoot.exe and HelixBoot.sh: update the stick or change its look from any PC
Mac/                tools for a working Mac, as downloaded, with a README.txt
PortableApps/       the PortableApps.com Platform's apps (Start.exe at the root)
ventoy/ventoy.json  generated menu: tree view, friendly names, icons, tips
ventoy/theme/       the look in use, built from .helix-boot (rebuilt on every refresh)
.helix-boot/        what this project manages: which tool each file is and which PC put
                    it there, the theme with its presets, and the look you chose