Disable High Contrast Keyboard Shortcut in Windows 10

Windows comes with a number of themes that provide high contrast mode.  They are useful when it is hard to read text on the screen because you need more color contrast. Also, high contrast mode can be enabled or disabled with a keyboard shortcut.

High Contrast Mode is a part of the Ease of Access system in Windows 10. It includes many options to improve the usability of the operating system, especially for users with various health issues.

Windows 10 includes a few high contrast themes that provide a different look for the OS. The following screenshot demonstrates one of them:

To quickly enable High Contrast, you can press the left Shift + left Alt + PrtScn keys. By pressing these keys a second time, you'll disable High Contrast. If you are not happy with these hotkeys (e.g. you would like to assign them to third party software), you can disable them.

The classic Control Panel app can be used to enable or disable the mentioned keyboard shortcut. Here is how it can be done.

To disable the High Contrast keyboard shortcut in Windows 10, do the following.

1. Open Control Panel.
2. Click on Ease of Access.
3. In Ease of Access, click on the Ease of Access Center. 
4. Click on the link Set up high contrast.
5. On the next page, uncheck the option Turn on or off High Contrast when left ALT + left SHIFT + PRINT SCREEN is pressed under High Contrast, then click on OK.

You are done. The keyboard shortcut is now disabled.

Also, a Registry tweak can be used to disable or enable the keyboard shortcut.

Disable the left ALT + left SHIFT + PRINT SCREEN shortcut with a Registry tweak

1. Open the Registry Editor app.
2. Go to the following Registry key.

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Accessibility\HighContrast

   See how to go to a Registry key with one click.

3. On the right, modify or create a new string (REG_SZ) value Flags.
   Set its value data to 4218 to disable the High Contrast shortcut.
   A value data of 4222 will enable the shortcut.
4. To make the changes done by the Registry tweak take effect, you need to sign out and sign in to your user account.

To save your time, you can download the following Registry files:

Download Registry Files

Related articles:

• Enable or Disable Color Filters Hotkey in Windows 10
• How to Enable Greyscale Mode in Windows 10
• How to Enable High Contrast Mode in Windows 10

That's it.