DO NOT CONTINUE WITH THIS GUIDE UNLESS YOU HAVE ADEQUATE BRICK PROTECTION, SPECIFICALLY BOOTMII AND PRIILOADER!
This tutorial does not work on the Wii mini. Do not attempt this tutorial on the Wii mini or it will cause a brick.
csm-installer has built in safety features to prevent from installing bad or corrupt Wii Menu themes, so please opt to use it instead of other theme installation homebrew.
Do not use any other version of ThemeMii than the one linked here, as ThemeMii Mod allows you to make a theme for Wii Menu version 4.3, other versions may not.
Only install themes on your Wii that have been formatted specifically for its version and current region. Installing themes from the wrong version or region on your Wii will cause a brick. This tutorial will tell you how to create a .csm file that is safe to install.
Before proceeding, it helps to know the difference between .MYM and .CSM as file formats when used in Wii Menu theming. While the MYM is made by the theme creator which can then be shared around, the CSM is the result from building a MYM into a system menu. In other words, MYM mainly just holds assets - the actual system menu itself that needs to be installed comes seperate.
If you don’t want to go through the hassle of using an external program to build a theme, you can also download a prebuilt theme from Wii Themer and skip to Theme Installation.
Once you download the theme you want and double-check that you have the right one for your system menu version and region, extract the .zip file for ThemeMii Mod and open the application.
Go to Tools -> Download Base App > Version of your Wii Menu > Region of your Wii Menu
A dialog box will pop-up asking you to enter in a value to create a key. Enter what it says, and it will create a key that will be used to decrypt the Wii Menu contents from Nintendo’s servers.
A file selection box will ask you where to save the .app file (that is the Wii Menu content file that it downloaded). Save it to the directory where ThemeMii is in.
Go to File -> Open, then browse for where your .mym file is.
Press Create csm, then browse for a directory you want to save the theme in. Give it a moment to build the theme.
A dialog box will pop up asking you if you want to save the .mym. Press No.
Theme Installation
csm-installer
Developer(s)
thepikachugamer
Console
Wii
Version
1.2 (November 26, 2023; 11 months ago (2023-11-26))
Extract the csm-installer .zip file to the root of your SD card or USB device.
Create a new directory on your SD card or USB device called themes if it does not already exist.
Copy your .csm file to the themes directory.
The root of your SD Card should now look like this:
(root)
apps
csm-installer
boot.dol
icon.png
meta.xml
themes
yourtheme.csm
Insert your SD card or USB drive into your Wii, and launch the Homebrew Channel.
Launch csm-installer, and wait for it to load.
Select the theme you would like to install with A. Be absolutely sure at this point that you have downloaded the correct theme for your system menu version and region.
Press + to install the theme.
Reboot into the Wii Menu, and see if the theme successfully installed. If all goes well, you will have a result similar to the below!
WiiFlow Lite Theming
Unfortunately, because of the codebase difference between the original WiiFlow and the newer WiiFlow Lite, themes are sparse - in fact, only one theme could be found that confidently works on the newer version. The instructions for installing that theme are below.
(root)
apps
boot.dol
