Lumina-ting the WP7 Emulator

Hands up – Who’s tired of running your WP7 app in an emulator that looks so… Dated?

Yeah me too. I came across a blog posting from Jeff Wilcox that offered to let you run your apps in a fancier looking emulator

This is basically the theme used by Microsoft Phone Marketing.  Don’t know about you but looks a little TOO iPhoney for me, if I’m developing for WP7 I want my emulator to look like the hottest new WP7 phone on the market today, yes the Nokia Lumia 800.

Thus I give you the files that allow you to achieve this very effect

 Download and install the theme

• Download a .7z Zip File of the resources
• Extract the files into a directory, make a copy of the files

Update the Emulator

• Ensure the emulator is closed
• Locate the emulator directory – usually something like
  • On x64 OS = C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft XDE\1.0\
  • On x32 OS = C:\Program Files\Microsoft XDE\1.0\
• Backup or rename the existing WM7_Skin.xml if you may want to go back
• Copy the files from the extracted resources into the emulator directory
  • Note you will need administrative permissions to copy / overwrite the files
• Start up the Emulator

But wait there’s more: what if you want to also see the Lumia Skin while you are working in Visual Studio, I’ve got the instructions for that as well

Update Visual Studio 

• Ensure All instances of Visual Studio are closed
• Locate the Microsoft Windows Phone SDK v7.1 emulator directory – usually something like
  • On x64 OS = C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.1\Emulation
  • On x32 OS = C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.1\Emulation
• Backup or rename the existing WM7_Skin.xml if you may want to go back
• Copy the files from the extracted resources into the emulator directory
  • Note you will need administrative permissions to copy / overwrite the files
• Start up Visual Studio and you have Lumia Goodness where ever you go!