Preware is a free Homebrew Installer from WebOS Internals for your Palm Pre or Pixi. Preware lets you download content directly to your phone. If you don’t yet have Preware, you can be in on the fun in a matter of minutes with the Preware Getting Started Guide.

Preware now includes content from Palm as well as PreCentral, PreThemer, WebOS-Internals, and others. All that means that now Preware now displays over 2,500 packages, including Homebrew Apps, patches, themes, and now official Palm Apps for your webOS Pre or Pixi.

Meanwhile, Homebrew games are coming along. In Preware, just tap Available Applications then Games to see them all! You can download games like Quake, SuperTux, Classic Invaders, DOOM!, Presteroids, Topple Maze, and Preopoly for free.

While Preware does not offer the webOS "Type to Search" feature in the main menu like the Palm Catalog, Preware does offer a List of Everything that now really is a list of everything. The secret is to start typing in the List of Everything and the "Type to Search" will work there. This upgrade also sports a new Upgrade All feature and a number of new features under the hood. Plus many more features are planned. And Preware can even remove apps when you have no signal.

One last note: with so much new content, Preware can now now take over 70 seconds to load even on a fast WiFi connection. If you don’t themes or Palm apps, click the Preware menu at the top-left then Manage Feeds. Then set the theme and Palm feeds to OFF. To see everything again, set all of the feeds back to ON. Make sure you are set to update feeds every launch.

So much has improved that the Preware Guide needed an update too, so be sure to check that out. Huge props to WebOS Internals for the massive update!

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In case you didn’t know, you can reach PreCentral at http://m.precentral.net – it’s a mobile version of PC with access to stories, reviews, and a mobile version of the forums. It works great in portrait and landscape modes. We’ve got plans, schemes, and machinations to make it better, but for now, does the job, hey? In addition, you can also add it to your launcher and the keenly-designed logo at the top will put a nice, circular icon on your launcher.

Enterprising PC members figured: why not make a little app out of it? After some discussion, we finally have an unofficial PreCentral App for the Palm Pre and Pixi! This is an "unofficial" PreCentral App. It simply puts a PreCentral icon in your App Launcher. Tap it to go to the mobile version of PreCentral to see Top Stories, Forums, Today’s Posts, Homebrew Gallery, and search options.

At some point, we hope to have a fancy PreCentral app with lots of bells and whistles. But in the mean time, you are now never more than a tap away from m.PreCentral.net.

Thanks to kmax12 and sketch42 for creating this app.

Landscape Mode

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Preware Main Screen

Preware is a free Homebrew Installer from WebOS Internals for your Palm Pre or Pixi. Preware lets you download Homebrew Apps, patches, and themes directly to your phone. Once Preware is installed you do not need to be connected to a computer because Preware does it’s magic "Over The Air."

In a few minutes you will have access to hundreds of free Homebrew Applications, Patches, and Themes right from your phone!

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There is a whole world of wonderful improvements that you can add to your Palm Pre or Pixi including homebrew apps, patches, and themes. You can be up and running with WebOS Quick Install in a matter of minutes! Come join the 280,000 PreCentral members already in on the secrets!

You can make the LED light up when you have missed notifications and have Email and Messaging work in landscape. You can fix the clock, save your battery, add a Virtual Keyboard, and get a real music player. And that is just the beginning…

• Homebrew Apps are applications in the last stage of development ("beta testing"). Try them out and give your feedback.
• Patches add missing features to the Messaging, Email, Calendar, Phone, Browser, and other apps.
• Themes customize your screens and icons for hundreds of your favorite teams, games, logos, and more.

The usual warnings apply. These apps, patches, and themes are under development – use with care. If you have any problems, see the Help section.

In a matter of minutes you can be in on the fun…

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In Part 1 we saw many of the new features that PreCentral member DanPLC has brought us with his Music Player (Remix). Remix is the most popular with over 150,000 downloads. We have already seen how Remix adds a list of features to the Palm Pre webOS Music Player including a slider, elapsed time, bookmarks, lyrics, Resume Play, and on-the-fly-playlists or "Flylists." In this installment we will round out our review with details on new options, playlist features, Alphabet Selector, fonts, background colors, wallpapers, and the new landscape mode.

More after the break…

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PreCentral member DanPLC has hit gold with his Music Player (Remix). Remix is one of the Favorite Homebrew Apps and the most popular with over 150,000 downloads. Remix  patches dozens of missing features into the Palm Pre webOS Music Player including a slider, elapsed time, font and background colors, wallpaper, bookmarks, lyrics, resume play, and on-the-fly-playlists. Perhaps the most amazing thing about Music Player (Remix) is that Dan has been working alone, part-time, for only two months.

The Palm Pre has a list of great features. Unfortunately few of them are in the Music Player. In 2003, the Palm Treo 600 came bundled with Pocket Tunes 2.1. pTunes featured on the fly playlists, "skins," a "progress bar," bookmarks, and could even resume playing a long rock track where you left off.  Sadly the Pre has not been able to meet Palm’s own 2003 standards…

…until now!

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Welcome to the third and last installment of "There’s a Patch for That!" Part 1 and Part 2 have already shown 28 of the top patches. Today we’ll be exploring more of these user patches (tweaks), including Calendar, Camera, Clock, and Email patches.  

Patches are modifications that add key features to existing Palm webOS applications. Maybe you wish you could change sounds or add a feature. Fortunately many of our Pre users are also talented developers who didn’t just wish for these fixes. They made them! Note that the Homebrew Apps are separate programs, not patches.

Again, patches can be installed using webOS Quick Install or Preware using these instructions.As always, the usual warnings apply.  You’re patching system webOS files, so stuff can break here. Plus the patching system is constantly evolving. For many Pre users, though, the risk is well worth the reward. (See: How to Revive a Pre.)

To remove a patch, click on the same patch again.  You can even remove all patches at once before an upgrade or any time you like. Using WebOS Quick Install, click Tools, Tweaks, "Online Repository" tab, and then install the Emergency Patch Recovery (EPR).  In Preware, install the Emergency Patch Recovery patch and restart your Pre to remove all patches. For much more see Patches.

And now for today’s patches…

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Welcome to the second installment of "There’s a Patch for That." Patches are modifications (tweaks) that add key features to existing Palm applications. For instance, have you wished for message forwarding or landscape mode for messaging, email, or PDF’s? Do you wish the Palm Pre webOS had other key features? Pre users have developed over 60 patches to make these and other wishes a reality!

In There’s a Patch for That (Part 1) we saw 14 of our favorite patches including the On Screen Keyboard, LED Notification, Launcher, and Email patches. Today we will explore patches that customize alerts and notifications, as well as the Messaging, Calendar, Contacts, and Phone Apps.   Note that the 250 Homebrew Apps are separate programs, not patches.  

Again, patches can be installed using webOS Quick Install (or Preware using these instructions). As always, the usual warnings apply.  You’re patching system webOS files, so stuff can break here. Plus the patching system is constantly evolving. For many Pre users, though, the risk is well worth the reward. (See: How to Revive a Pre.)

To remove a patch, click on the same patch again. You can even remove all patches at once before an upgrade or any time you like. Using WebOS Quick Install, click Tools, Tweaks, "Online Repository" tab, and then install the Emergency Patch Recovery (EPR).  In Preware, install the Emergency Patch Recovery patch and restart your Pre to remove all patches.   For much more see Patches.

Here are more of our favorite patches…

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webOS Quick Install 2.7 Main Tweaks Screen

The Palm Pre webOS 1.2.0 and 1.2.1 updates brought users 125 new features and improvements (and some issues). Now it is the Pre user community’s turn to give back. Users have developed dozens of patches (tweaks) including the On Screen Keyboard, landscape modes for Email and Messaging, plus upgrades for the Launcher, Sounds, Calendar, Contacts, and Phone.  Patches are modifications that add key features to existing Palm webOS applications.  Homebrew Apps are new programs.

The PreCentral forums are abuzz with brainstorming and testing while the patch source code and development are at webOS-internals.org. Patches can be installed using webOS Quick Install or Preware using these instructions. As always, we need to throw the usual warning and provisos up there: you’re patching system webOS files, so stuff can break here. For many Pre users, though, the risk is well worth the reward.  (See: How to Revive a Pre.)

To remove a patch, click on the same patch again.  You can remove all patches before an upgrade or any time you like. Using WebOS Quick Install, click Tools, Tweaks, "Online Repository" tab, and then install the Emergency Patch Recovery (EPR).  In Preware, install the Emergency Patch Recovery patch and restart your Pre to remove all patches.

Here are some of our favorite patches so far.

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With users finding so many ways to tweak their Palm Pre’s, some wonder if they might "Brick" their Pre (make it stop working). The good news is that you basically can’t brick a Pre and if it seems ‘bricked,’ there are lots of ways to restore it. In extreme cases, which translates to ‘hardware failure,’ you can brick your Pre, but we’re going to assume you know what to do when that happens (get a replacement).

So you’ve managed to get your Pre in dire straits. We’re going to walk you through the steps you should take to try to save it.

After the break, we will detail how to do a quick Restart, Partial Erase, and Full Erase. Then we’ll detail how to use the webOS Repair Utility, webOS Doctor, and what to do if even the palm.com website instructions don’t work. If you know the tricks, you can save your data too.

One quick note: Since that webOS 1.2.1 update just came out, you may need to wait a bit for some of the tools we’re going to discuss to be fully updated to work. At the moment, webOS Doctor and WebOS Repair Utility are not compatible with 1.2.1. When that changes, we’ll update this article.

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