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In the Windows 10 taskbar, the active window is not very strongly highlighted. This makes it difficult to quickly see which window is active. How can I change the color of the active window?

Related questions:

root
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  • I use a workaround detailed in this answer: [Classic Shell approach](https://superuser.com/questions/1717690/make-active-window-more-obvious-on-taskbar-windows-10/1758928#1758928) – Xan-Kun Clark-Davis Dec 21 '22 at 15:50

2 Answers2

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AccentPaletteTool or Winaero Tweaker can be tried, but I haven't checked whether it provides a full solution. A full solution without using a tool is this:

  • Go to Settings → Personalization → Colors. Enable "show color on Start, taskbar and action center". (If it is greyed out, change from the light mode to the dark mode. You can still customize most colors to be light or whatever you want.)
  • Open the Registry Editor
  • Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Accent\AccentPalette
  • Set the entries 10,11,12 of AccentPalette to the web color you want. (If taskbar transparency is enabled, then maybe other entries than 10,11,12 should be changed.) (Some entries were explained in a discussion on Reddit here.)
  • To solve the problem that "it affects many places": set HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes\Personalize\ColorPrevalence to the value 2

Result: screenshot

root
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  • https://superuser.com/help/self-answer – root Jun 07 '20 at 17:54
  • thanks, I tried https://github.com/Raymai97/AccentPaletteTool ,it work! it is a good GUI tool to change AccentPalette , after run it, you will see 8 colors, you need change 5th color, and then click "Restart Explorer"; if you want to change AccentPalette manually, for example, "AccentPalette"=hex:c1,f7,dd,00,a6,f7,d0,00,68,e3,a8,00,00,cc,6a,00,00,a2,28, 00,00,52,2a,00,00,2b,16,00,e3,00,8c,00 , you need to change "00,a2,28" (RGB 0,162,40) to other color – qiz_newbie Apr 14 '23 at 07:22
  • @qiz_newbie The 4th color has to be changed, not the 5th. And it seems that AccentPaletteTool alone doesn't do the trick, and the first step of my answer is additionally necessary. – root Jul 01 '23 at 18:35
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Negative answer : Windows 10 users are out of luck as Microsoft has disabled taskbar button skinning based on themes (visual styles).

Also, as Windows 10 constantly keeps changing, a theme will not work for long and major updates will break it.

harrymc
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