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Set colored title bars but keep black taskbar and Start menu in Windows 10

As you may already know, the recently released Windows 10 Version 1511, known as November 2015 Update or Threshold 2, allows you to have colored title bars once again like you had in Windows releases as old as Windows 3.0! But when you use the Windows 10 GUI settings app, it only gives you the choice to have either both, colored title bars and a colored taskbar and Start menu, or you get the option to have a black taskbar with white title bars. In this article, we will see how to bypass this limitation and get a black taskbar while keeping colored titlebars.

To get a black taskbar with colored titlebars, you need to do the following.

  1. Open the Settings app.
  2. Go to Personalization -> Colors.
  3. Turn off the option called Show color on Start, taskbar, action center, and title bar as shown below:Windows 10 disable show color
  4. Now, Open Registry Editor.
  5. Go to the following Registry key:
    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\DWM

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

  6. There you will find a DWORD value called ColorPrevalence. It will be set to 0. Change its value data to 1: Windows 10 color prevalence
  7. Now, just change your wallpaper for the changes to take effect! Go to Personalization -> Background and pick an image. Or you can sign out from your user account and sign in back. You will get the following appearance:Windows 10 colored title bars dark taskbar 2 Windows 10 colored title bars dark taskbar

Using this trick, you can get a really interesting and unique look for your Desktop in Windows 10 Version 1511. It is a bit strange that Microsoft didn't allow this without this hack.

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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.

9 thoughts on “Set colored title bars but keep black taskbar and Start menu in Windows 10”

  1. You are genius. Thanks you. If one day you end up making a tool instead of MS for this, many would be really happy. smile emoticon

  2. it’s not that strange for microsoft to not provide something they don’t realize they can provide – hacks by their nature are exploits of features original developers didn’t know could be used. Communities like Winaero bring attention to new ways and with enough demand microsoft will ship it into a GUI edition or capitalize on a hack as an inspiration and create something even better. It would be strange for microsoft to lock down the system registry as it proven to be a great way to juice out the fullest potential from Windows though

  3. This method is nice and all but unfortunately there are some inconsistencies with colors when you use a darker theme. Most of my windows like the task manager have white text while folders have black text.

    1. Found a way:
      http://www.аskvg.cоm/twеаk-соlоrizаtiоn-sеttings-fоr-titlеbar-tаskbаr-and-stаrt-mеnu-in-windоws-10/

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