How customizable is a FiveM phone script?

"Customizable" is the word every phone script uses, and it hides three very different things. Some scripts let the server owner swap assets. Some let players change how their own phone looks. Some only let you edit a colour variable and call it theming. The difference matters, because the parts you cannot change are the parts you will be looking at every day for the next two years.

This guide splits customization into what the server owner controls and what the player controls, and says where the line usually sits.

What the server owner changes

Two of those are worth expanding, because they are the ones people search for specifically.

Adding your own wallpapers

A wallpaper is a file plus one line of config. Drop the image into gksphone/html/img/wallpapers, then register it in Settings.Wallpapers in config.json, continuing the numbering. The shipped set is .webp; .jpg and .png work too. Fourteen ship by default, and there is no cap on how many you add — the picker scrolls.

From v2.8 wallpapers can also be painted rather than uploaded: a colour and a gradient generated on the phone itself. That matters more than it sounds, because it means a player can have a wallpaper nobody had to host, and your server does not accumulate image files.

Adding ringtones and notification sounds

Same shape, two folders. Ringtones go in gksphone/html/sounds/ringtones/ and notification sounds in gksphone/html/sounds/notifications/. Both accept .ogg or .mp3. Register the file in Settings in config.json — the key you use is the name players see in the phone's own Settings app, so name it for them, not for you.

What the player changes

• Wallpaper — from your set, or painted on the phone (v2.8)
• Ringtone and notification sound — per phone, from your set
• Theme — iOS or Android, switchable on the same phone
• Home screen — apps dragged between pages, dropped into folders, widgets added (v2.8)
• Lock screen — shortcuts and clock style
• Which apps are installed — anything marked show: true can be removed and reinstalled from the App Gallery

The last one is the one server owners underestimate. If every app is a system app, a player who never uses the stock market still has it on their home screen forever. Marking an app installable rather than permanent is a customization decision you make once and players live with daily.

What is usually not customizable

Be honest with yourself about this list when you compare scripts, because it is where the marketing stops. In most phone scripts, including ours, the following are not config: the layout of an individual app's screens, the animation language, the shape of the notification system, and the underlying database schema. Changing those means editing source — which, in an escrowed resource, you cannot do at all.

So the practical question is not "is it customizable" but "is the part I want to change on the config side of the line". Ask for the config file before you buy. Any developer who will not show it is telling you something.

Writing your own app

The ceiling of customization is adding an app that did not ship. GKSPHONE has a documented path for it — a Vue page, an entry in the app list, and the same NUI bridge the built-in apps use. If a script has no such path, everything above is the complete list of what you will ever be able to change.