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Enable Dark Title Bars with Custom Accent Color in Windows 10

As you may already know, Windows 10 allows you to switch between the dark and light themes. This can be done with Settings. The appropriate options are located under Personalization -> Colors. Also, you can customize the accent color and apply it to the Start menu and taskbar, and/or window title bars. With a simple Registry tweak, you can enable the black color for title bars only, and keep the current color of window frames (e.g. the default blue color).

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During the development time of Windows 10, its Personalization options were changed several times. The most recent version of the OS allows enabling and disabling colors individually for title bars, and the taskbar. Also, it is possible to define a custom color as your accent color using a special dialog.

Windows 10 Color Dialog

Windows 10 offers a new Light Theme that applies a pale grey color to the Start menu, taskbar, and the Action Center pane. There are a number of options that allow customizing the theme, and setting the app theme to light or dark separately from the taskbar.

Windows 10 Light Theme In Action

Unfortunately, Windows 10 does not allow changing the title bar color without changing your accent color. Here is how it can be done.

To enable Dark Title Bars with Custom Accent Color in Windows 10, do the following.

  1. Open Settings and navigate to Personalization > Colors.
  2. Turn off (uncheck) the Title bars and window borders option.Windows 10 Disable Title Bar Color
  3. Now, Open Registry Editor.
  4. Go to the following Registry key:
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\DWM

    Tip: You can access any desired Registry key with one click.

  5. Create or modify a 32-bit DWORD value called ColorPrevalence. Set it to 1.Windows 10 ColorPrevalence
  6. Now, edit the AccentColor value and set it to ff3d3d3d.Windows 10 AccentColor
  7. Now, just change your wallpaper for the changes to take effect. Go to Personalization -> Background and pick any image.Windows 10 Change Wallpaper

The result will be as follows. Notice that while the title bar is dark in color, the accent color still remains blue as it was prior to the tweak.

Windows 10 Dark Title Bar Blue Accent Color

Note: Once you change your accent color using Settings, it will reset the title bar color and will eliminate customizations described above. You will have to repeat them manually.

Also, you can change color of inactive title bars in Windows 10. Create a new 32-bit DWORD value AccentColorInactive and set it to the desired color value.

To save your time, you can use my freeware Winaero Tweaker. The appropriate option is already available in the app:

Winaero Tweaker inactive titlesYou can download Winaero Tweaker here:

Download Winaero Tweaker

Actually, this tweak is not new. We have covered it before in the following articles:

Other interesting articles:

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Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

6 thoughts on “Enable Dark Title Bars with Custom Accent Color in Windows 10”

  1. You can also have dark (or any other colour really) title bars for unfocused windows too! IMO it’s essential if you’re using a Dark theme, otherwise you still get that ugly white title bar on unfocused Win32 apps.

    Go to:
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM
    Create a DWORD called “AccentColorInactive” and set the value to your preferred colour code.
    I personally use “AccentColorInactive”=dword:002B2B2B

  2. Hi,
    Thanks for you info
    I just wanted White tilte bars and back edges ( borders ),
    can I achieve that using this tweak? if yes please tell me how.
    thank you so much

  3. I recently updated to 1909. The dark title bars were working prior to this, but since the update, the Accent Color is forced to the title bars on each restart

    1. This. It still does it. After restart AccentColor reverts back to the one set in the option instad of the one typed into registry

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