Windows theme is the default theme now. It can be customised in Preferences > Themes. There you can change back to what used to be Mac theme (now called Minimal), or customise the layout and make your own version.
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There are certainly good reasons for wanting to change the current theme programmatically. E.g. an automated test tool may need to switch between various themes to make sure the application works correctly with all of them.
As a user, you can change the theme by double-clicking a .theme file in Windwos Explorer and then closing the Control Panel applet that pops up. You can easily do the same from code. The steps below work just fine for me. I've only tested on Windows 7.
I have been experimenting about changing the windows theme via command line and I learned that by executing the theme file it is being applied by the Windows 10 as well. So in your batch file, you could use one of the following lines:
Please note the path to the theme files might be needed to adjust depending on your system user configuration. I strongly advise saving your themes with names excluding spaces as it makes much easier moving forward. Executing such line leaving you with the Settings window opened. To deal with I considered using VBS script instead. Thanks to Patrick Haugh user1390106 there is a much easier way to close the Settings window.
I believe the best you can do is open your target .msstyles file (in c:\windows\resources\themes), which will pop up the display properties box. At this point you could use window subclassing to programmatically click the right buttons.
In addition of the post of "Jan Goyvaerts":I use SendMessage instead of PostMessage. The difference is that SendMessage waits for the command to be taken in by the window. Meaning that in the SendMessages returns, you know that the theme dialog is closed.
So if you start it with the monstrous (but genious) rundll32.exe method suggested by "Campbell". You should wait a sec before sending WM_CLOSE. Otherwise the theme will not be set and the application closes right away.
The code snippet below extracts a file from resource (a themepack). Then executes the desk.cpl with rundll32.exe, waits 3 sceonds, then sends WM_CLOSE (0x0010), waits for the command to be process (the time it takes for the theme to be set).
For a user that logs in, we simply run ChangeTheme.vbs as the user logs in (e.g. autorun). The script starts desk.cpl and passes the required parameters to it as well as the name of the selected theme.
Some folks, including me, followed a performance tweak and were stuck with the Windows 7 toolbar being a white (Windows Classic). Altering the theme did not correct this. It turned out the Themes service was not automatic.
Since you can execute theme files, you can add the file to run at startup in the registry or also by adding it to the startup folder I think. I have my theme in a read-only folder on the network and added a startup key on the machine. One drawback of using a startup key is that if you look at the startup list in task manager it shows up as "Program" and if there is more than one you can't tell which is which.
The problem with applying a theme to an existing user profile is that the registry key for setting the theme is per user. There is no computer level theme setting as far as I can tell. The user level setting is set with CurrentTheme under Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes. Changing the path doesn't seem to change the theme though.
I never found a better solution so I'm using the GPO to apply theme to new user sign-in. For some reason it is not applying all of the settings included in the theme. The slideshow duration is set to 6 hours but new users are set for 30 minutes. I may just add running the theme file to a new user setup script we have and apply it manually for good measure. Another option is a login script you can apply to all users for a time then remove. Or add a logon script to change a system variable when it's applied or check the registry to see if it's applied. There are lots of hacky solutions but nothing provided by Microsoft for existing users unfortunately.
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This is a custom theme that samples colours and replicates as many nuances of the Windows 98 desktop as possible. Ideally I tried to change all the colours to look how 3D modelling software in the 90s would look. Some liberties were taken for the sake of readability. The ZIP download here has two versions of the theme: one for Blender 2.7 and one for 2.8.
I have takes these screenshots using Windows 7 with classic theme so that someone can see some errors in the colors to fix it.
Like the background color to the left and right of the horizontal scroll bar seem to be to dark or light in some themes.
The drop down boxes seem to always use bright white which does not look good in dark and high contrast themes.
Compare with screenshots on _features_in_this_release
Some parts of the Audacity interface are themed by the computer Desktop theme rather than by Audacity. I believe that this is due to a design decision in WxWidgets.
The idea of Themes in Audacity is not to override the system Desktop theme, but rather to complement it. So if you have a dark Desktop theme, then you can select a dark theme in Audacity that will compliment the Desktop theme. If on the other hand you chose a theme for Audacity that conflicts with the system Desktop theme, then the result can look very ugly.
For those of you using AHK or those interested, I recently decided I needed a hotkey to toggle the Windows 10 Default App modes (light theme and dark theme). Lo and behold, AHK and RegEdit to the rescue.
I am trying to install a windows theme for all users. I created an MSI that puts the .jpg and .theme files in the respective folder. This installs during the OSD Task Sequence from SCCM. The problem is, it does not activate the theme when a user logs in. I edited the GPO "Load a specific Theme" to this install location and theme. I know the GPO only works when a new user logs in. I have tested this many times with my Engineering team and it still will not activate the theme until "manually" selected.
A Windows Theme is a visual pattern that predefines the collection of wallpaper, icons, pointer, screensaver, sounds or any color styles which together form the looks of your PC. You have the options to customize the themes to your likings and modify the standard interface of your Windows PC.
There are Windows Themes available on this site and it's free to download. Each theme can be classified into certain categories such as games, animes, sport, movies, nature and just about anything you can think of. Now here you have the high-quality themes at your fingertips and we are constantly updating the new themes. Explore the Windows Themes galleries now!
Browse through the categories and pick any Windows themes according to your personal preferences. Before downloading the themes, please choose any version of your Windows 11, 10 or 7. Locate destination of the downloaded file and after opening the file, it will automatically go to the theme setting and you can change it to the recent themes.
Also, firefox has its own theme, that's why it's not following the windows one, but there are a ton of available themes, and you can choose a good contrast one here: -US/firefox/themes/ There are plenty of white on black themes to choose from
Although we try to keep breaking changes to a minimum, it is possible that some are introduced from time to time and that is why we suggest using the embedded recourses (from the theme dll) instead of copying the files manually. Nonetheless, I want to assure you that we thoroughly test any new functionality in all frameworks. With that said, it is not possible to go over all use-cases and setups.
why we suggest using the embedded recourses (from the theme dll) instead of copying the files manually
This application was started before implicit styles were developped by Telerik and it would be a nonsense to change it to use implicit styles.