Windows 10 includes Color Filters as a part of Ease of Access system. They improve usability of the operating system for people with various vision issues. Color filters work at the system level, so all installed software including third-party apps and built-in Windows apps will follow them. Let's see how to enable this useful feature.
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Note: The Color Filters feature is available in Windows 10 starting with build 16215. See how to find the Windows 10 build number you are running.
The available colors filters in Windows 10 are as follows.
- Greyscale
- Invert
- Greyscale Inverted
- Deuteranopia
- Protanopia
- Tritanopia
To enable Color Filters in Windows 10, press the Win + Ctrl + C shortcut keys together on your keyboard. This sequence will enable or disable (toggle) the color filter set by default. Out of the box, Windows 10 is using the greyscale filter.
To customize the filters, do the following.
- Open Settings.
- Go to Ease of Access -> Color and high contrast.
- On the left, select the desired filter from the drop down list under "Choose a filter".
- Now, you need to enable the filter. Turn on the option Apply color filters to the screen. The selected filter will be applied instantly.
You can use the mentioned Win + Ctrl + C hotkey to toggle the color filter.
The Color Filters feature can be also configured with a Registry tweak as follows.
Configure Color Filters in the Registry
Open the Registry Editor app and go to the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\ColorFiltering.
On the right, you need to create or modify two 32-bit DWORD values named Active and FilterType. Note: Even if you are running a 64-bit Windows version, you still need to use a 32-bit DWORD value type.
The Active value is responsible for the state of the feature:
- Active=1 means the Color Filters feature is enabled.
- Active=0 means the Color Filters feature is disabled.
The FilterType parameter can be set to one of the following values.
- 0 = Greyscale
- 1 = Invert
- 2 = Greyscale Inverted
- 3 = Deuteranopia
- 4 = Protanopia
- 5 = Tritanopia
Sign out from your Windows 10 account to apply the changes made by this tweak. You are done.
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Mine’s only got high contrast option, no color filters.
16215?
This is actually a pretty cool feature and you can still benefit from it even if you don’t have vision issues. A good example is using your computer at night. Now you can simply hit Win + Ctrl + C to invert everything (essentially a system-wide dark theme) and this makes it easier for doing things like browsing websites and writing papers at night.
I’m surprised this isn’t getting a lot of attention.