Getting brighter colors in Windows 10

Note: Things work differently in newer Windows 10 versions, and this tool might not be relevant anymore. See this comment for more details.


(Top = before, bottom = after)

Windows 10 allows you to customize the taskbar and start menu colors, but it provides only a limited set of predefined colors. In addition, no matter which color you’ll pick, the taskbar will end up being dark. I searched, but haven’t found a straightforward way to have a bright taskbar on Windows 10. Fortunately, I have discovered that there’s an undocumented registry key which makes explorer use an alternative color calculation algorithm, which in turn produces brighter colors. You can see the difference in the example image above.

I wrote a quick application, Windows 10 Color Control, which allows you to modify the Windows 10 colors, and to get this alternative color calculation algorithm. The original Windows 10 calculation algorithm is referred to as the “New auto-color accent algorithm”, according to the undocumented registry value name.

Download

zip Windows 10 color control.zip (112.8 kB)

Source code

https://github.com/m417z/Windows-10-Color-Control
Read More…

Posted in Reverse Engineering on August 19th, 2015. 137 Comments.