WinPaletter: customize Windows theme colors to your liking

Martin Brinkmann
Jun 10, 2022
Updated • Jun 10, 2022
Windows software
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15

WinPaletter is an open source application for Microsoft's Windows 10 and 11 operating system, that gives users more control over the color customizations of the system.

Windows 10 and 11 users get a few personalization options in Settings by default. The options, displayed after right-clicking on the desktop and selecting Personalization, let users pick a single accent color to modify the color set of the operating system.

Users who want more control may edit colors in the Registry. WinPaletter is an open source program for Windows that makes the process more user friendly.

Note: Windows SmartScreen may display a warning when you run the program. The program tested fine on Virustotal (2 hits from minor engines), and it is likely that the program displays the warning because it is new and not widely used.

Windows theme color customizations

change windows colors

WinPaletter's user interface is well designed. It lists options on the left and a preview of the selection on the right. Some options toggle features, such as accent colors or the blur effect, but most allow you to select a color for specific user interface elements.

Tip: you may want to save the current theme colors to a new theme file, as there is no reset option. Changing colors in the personalization menu of the Windows settings changes the custom colors, however.

A click on any of the colors opens a new page with color selection options. WinPaletter supports several color picking options:

  • Color wheel and sliders.
  • Color hex codes that you may enter manually.
  • Using a color grid.
  • Getting a color palette from an image that you select.

Colors that you select are shown in the preview window when you hit the refresh button. There is also a handy element picker attached to the Color Picker window, which you may use to pick an element on the screen that you want to change the color for.

Once you have selected a color, you may go back and hit the Apply button to apply the changes to the system. Note that this requires editing of the Registry by the program; you may get one or two Registry and Registry console window UAC prompts in the process.

WinPaletter gives you full control over accents, but also over traditional Win32 user interface elements. Select the Win32 UI Elements button on the main page to open these color customization settings.

win32 ui elements

There you may change the color of menus, buttons, titlebars, windows and more. The process itself is identical: select an element with a click and pick a different color to apply it.

WinPaletter supports the saving and loading of color themes. Hit the save or load buttons in the interface to use the functionality; this is handy for safekeeping, sharing, or moving to other Windows devices.

Closing Words

WinPaletter is a powerful software for Windows 10 and 11 users who want more control over the colors that are used by the operating system. The program is well designed and easy to use. Import and export options are available to save themes with different colors.

Now You: do you keep default colors or change them?

Summary
software image
Author Rating
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3.5 based on 6 votes
Software Name
WinPaletter
Operating System
Windows
Software Category
Personalization
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Comments

  1. Jojo said on June 13, 2022 at 10:02 am
    Reply

    Is there any software to change the the color schemes on MS Office? I switched to Office 2016 a few moths back and their color themes now are awful and essentially non-customizable.

    The only choices you get are “Colorful” (NOT!), ‘Dark Gray’ (Blah!), ‘White’ (Double blah!) and ‘Use system setting’, which produces the same color scheme as ‘Colorful’ and DOES NOT match my system colors.

    I’ve searched around but cannot find an app that can change Office colors in 2016 or later.

  2. Jojo said on June 13, 2022 at 9:56 am
    Reply

    I was looking for something like this a while back. Win before 10 used to be able to finely control the theme colors but MS ruined all that with their stupid Settings (for instance there is no way that I can see to change the color of the active and inactive title bars using the Win 10 Settings control.

    1. Jojo said on June 13, 2022 at 10:06 am
      Reply

      P.S. An app called WinAero can control color settings but it isn’t as easy to use as this app.

      (Sure would be nice to have a 10 minuted edit capability on posts!).

  3. Calvin said on June 12, 2022 at 9:32 am
    Reply

    I hope they make it possible for us to edit the Windows Mode and App Mode color as I really would like to change the color of the dark or light theme to a custom color as this would be a game charger for power users if we could change the color of the context menu and File Explorer background color.

  4. bismillah said on June 11, 2022 at 11:45 pm
    Reply
  5. Coriy said on June 10, 2022 at 4:47 pm
    Reply

    The program received a “critical update” 3 hours ago. The blur toggle is gone, for now. @Reddit Guy, it’s Martin’s scheme, on his computer, so he’s the owner,hence his name is used.

  6. kalmly said on June 10, 2022 at 4:45 pm
    Reply

    Very glad to see this article; very glad to see this application. For more than 6 months I’ve had a Win10 laptop still residing in its packing box. I bought it to use on the internet, and nothing else, but I so hate Win 10, I haven’t been able to bring myself to set the thing up. The more applications I can collect to improve the OS’s looks and functions, the happier I am.

    1. Mystique said on June 10, 2022 at 7:05 pm
      Reply

      @Kalmly That sucks.
      Maybe you can list the software you do have already and then maybe we can recommend stuff you may want or need that you haven’t acquired yet.
      Whilst windows 10 isn’t the best OS ever released by Microsoft it is perfectly usable. You may even grow to like it particularly with all the third party software and tweaks you can deploy.

      You could even make a base image and if you stuff something up or are unhappy you can go back or even reformat and put it back in the box even. There is no reason you should be leaving your laptop to sit in a box gathering dust.

    2. Trey said on June 10, 2022 at 5:53 pm
      Reply

      There are plenty of apps to customize the UI and third-party apps to replace the default ones. What a waist of money if you’re not going to use the thing….? Odd.

  7. Reddit Guy said on June 10, 2022 at 1:09 pm
    Reply

    Why did you put your name instead of the designer’s name on the illustrative picture?
    Give credits to the real designer.

    1. Anonymous said on June 11, 2022 at 12:23 am
      Reply

      It’s true. If you open the program on your own machine, it will show your own username there.

    2. Anonymous said on June 10, 2022 at 11:01 pm
      Reply
    3. Mystique said on June 10, 2022 at 4:48 pm
      Reply

      That appears based on what the name of the username of the profile on windows. In Martin’s case his windows profile username is Martin.

    4. Martin Brinkmann said on June 10, 2022 at 2:18 pm
      Reply

      I did not.

  8. Mystique said on June 10, 2022 at 11:15 am
    Reply

    Another interesting one for windows is Mica For Everyone. I haven’t used it myself but it looks interesting.

    https://github.com/MicaForEveryone/MicaForEveryone

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