This post was published 10 years, 4 months ago. Due to the rapidly evolving world of technology, some material it contains may no longer be applicable.
If you have a Nexus 10 then you will likely have noticed that when Google first introduced transparency to the status and navigations bars the in KitKat, the Nexus 10 was left out and kept the solid black coloured bars regardless of the app you were using.
The reason Google gave for this at the time was that the feature would compromise performance. The most likely cause of this would be the Nexus 10’s display. You see, the Nexus 10 sports a very high display resolution that was well ahead of its time. Consequently, the now rather outdated GPU already has to work quite hard just to keep everything looking smooth as it is pushing more pixels than even most of the newest tablets released today 2 years on! Translucent decorations only add to this load.
However, KitKat mods and custom ROMs were made to enable the feature anyway and while there was a slight drop in the framerates on the homescreen for some users, the device generally seemed to cope just fine. We had hoped then that with the extra tweaks to performance in Lollipop, Google would have reconsidered enabling translucent decorations for the Nexus 10, but alas this was not to be.
The good news is that since APKTool was recently updated to support Lollipop, it has now been possible to decompile the new system framework APK from the Nexus 10. This allowed for a small modification to be made which enables the translucent decorations, just as was done with KitKat. We have then packed this modified framework in ZIP which you can flash through a custom recovery such as TWRP or ClockworkMod. You can download this in the section below.
In my experience so far this there has been absolutely no noticeable effect on performance in enabling translucent decorations the Nexus 10 with Lollipop. The slight frame drops it caused on KitKat seem to be gone now and so we would really like to see Google enable the feature officially in a future update. Sadly we are not too hopeful it will ever happen.
Download
Note: Root access is not required for this mod but you will need to have unlocked your bootloader in order to flash a compatible custom recovery. Also note that this will work for stock ROMs on the Nexus 10 with the exact build and version number ONLY and should not be installed on other devices or other Android versions (even flashing the 5.0.1 mod on 5.0 will make your device unbootable!).
Warning: As always, by flashing this MOD you accept that you are doing so at entirely your own risk and we are not responsible for any consequences. We will not be held accountable if this breaks your device, kills your puppy or starts a zombie apocalypse and ruins your Christmas. You have been warned. That said, while we are unable to offer any guarantees, we do feel such side-effects are improbable and consider it to generally be pretty safe!
Android 5.0.1
File: signed_TranslucentDecorMOD-Nexus10-LRX22C.zip
MD5 Sum: e452601b1c24fab5e625a8f75a017f1e
Android 5.0.2
File: signed_TranslucentDecorMOD-Nexus10_LRX22G.zip
MD5 Sum: 33ba065be63364f9344fea26e23cb52f
Update (8/03/15): The 5.0.2 patch has been reported to cause bootloops. We’re looking into this and if we can find a problem we will release an updated version once we have made a fix. For now we do not recommend you download this.
Android 5.1
File: signed_TranslucentDecorMOD-Nexus10-LMY47D.zip
MD5 Sum: 02fa0fd77bc1e1fa2baa5b595b46c87d
