SnowBoard vs Anemone – Which is the better theming engine?

Anemone has a new competitor in the house – SnowBoard. Here’s how Coolstar’s old guard theming engine stacks up against Spark Dev’s modern theming engine.

SnowBoard vs Anemone comparison

1. Theming and customization  

Anemone has been a staple in every jailbreaker’s setup since it lets you theme pretty much everything.

For instance, you can use it to customize your stock theme, respring icon, Control Center modules, and dock. With Anemone, you can mix and match different themes and create your own unique setup.

SnowBoardCoolstar’s theming engine also lets you preview your setup before you apply it, which is a major plus in my book.

SnowBoard, on the other hand, only lets you customize your change your theme and modify icons. It also lets you change the respring logo but that function is not fully functional yet.

• Winner – Anemone

2. Resource usage/Battery-friendliness

Anemone is a massive resource hog and almost instantly deteriorates the battery life after you apply a theme.

Users have experienced extreme battery drain (one percent per minute) when using Anemone on a tweak-heavy jailbreak setup.

Here’s a benchmark report that shows the single-core and multi-core scores before and after uninstalling Anemone.

Although SnowBoard doesn’t have a lot of customization features that Anemone has, it makes up for it with its lightweight resource utilization and ability to work even on less powerful devices.

• Winner – SnowBoard

3. Ease of use

Anemone has more customization options but all of them require a respring. Moreover, the options in the Anemone app can be a bit daunting for the novice user.

With SnowBoard, you can change your theme literally in seconds. There are no resprings involved and you can access its preferences just like any other Cydia tweak. Just a few taps and you are good to go.

• Winner – SnowBoard

4. Compatibility 

Anyone who has been using Anemone for a long time knows that its compatibility is spotty at best. Coolstar reportedly had a spat with Luca Todesco, the developer of Yalu jailbreak, and hence pulled the plug on iOS 10.

Even to this day, Anemone isn’t fully compatible with any iteration of iOS 10, a firmware that a lot of jailbreakers still use.

Thankfully enough, Spark’s theming platform is fully compatible with all versions beginning with iOS 7 all the way up till iOS 11.

• Winner – SnowBoard

5. Support

Though it’s a bit early to foresee how long Spark Dev plans to maintain SnowBoard, he’s a mature developer who intends releases regular updates for his packages.

Coolstar, on the other hand, initially wanted to roll out a paid version of Anemone with regular updates and maintenance.

The Electra jailbreak developer also offered another option to Anemone users – a free theming engine with little to no support.

Obviously, we can’t hound a developer for making moolah off of his work.

However, he needs to up his game considering other developers are willing to offer a similar product, which is better than Anemone, with better support without charging a penny.

SnowBoard v1.0.1 released on Chariz repo (dev – @SparkDev_). Fixes –

✅Some themes not loading the correct resolution icon
✅Overlay sometimes not responding
✅Icon picker not showing all clock icon backgrounds
✅Wrong clock icon background
✅Preference bundle error
✅Others

— Yalu Jailbreak (@Yalujb) October 5, 2018

• Winner – SnowBoard

Final Verdict

SnowBoard is the clear winner here and for all the right reasons.

ake no mistake, SnowBoard theming engine has its drawbacks but it’s also just 24 hours old. You can expect a much more streamlined and stable experience in the future builds of the tool.

Unless you want in-depth system0wide theming capabilities, you should and must switch over to SnowBoard from Anemone as soon as possible.

Which theming engine do you prefer – Anemone or SnowBoard? Leave your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below.