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Windows 10 Colorful Apps in Start Menu?


Tengerecki

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Check attachment pic.

 

Is there a way to make the start menu colorful like long ago?

I can't remember which update it was but you can look at the date on the task bar - at that time my Windows was fully updated.

 

 

compare2.jpg

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2 hours ago, Dave-H said:

Did you have a custom theme before?
It may have reverted to the default on an update.
:dubbio:

 

No I have never used custom themes on Windows 10 due to frequent updates, which usually break everything; this is how it was by default. It's changed over time. I prefer colorful app tiles to this pale lifeless gray stuff. Is there a way to restore it?

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The background to my start menu tiles is blue like on your first image, but I do have a custom theme.
Doing that may be the only way to get it the way you want it now I'm afraid.
If you save the theme it should be easy to restore it if it gets changed in the future by an update, but that has never happened for me.
:)

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16 hours ago, Dave-H said:

The background to my start menu tiles is blue like on your first image, but I do have a custom theme.
Doing that may be the only way to get it the way you want it now I'm afraid.
If you save the theme it should be easy to restore it if it gets changed in the future by an update, but that has never happened for me.
:)

Could you tell me what theme you're using?

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It's one I modified myself from the default, it's not one of the standard ones.
I changed the taskbar to blue for instance, along with the highlights.
Here it is if you'd like to try it!
You can of course modify it to your own liking, but it might give you a starting point.
:)
Dave-H.theme

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The start menu was changed in Build 19042 to be more fluent-like by removing icon borders and making the icon borders on the tiles theme-aware. If you don't want this feature, you have to go back to 19041 or older. (20H2 changed the start menu)

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1 hour ago, Dave-H said:

It's one I modified myself from the default, it's not one of the standard ones.
I changed the taskbar to blue for instance, along with the highlights.
Here it is if you'd like to try it!
You can of course modify it to your own liking, but it might give you a starting point.
:)
Dave-H.theme

This theme file points to custom .msstyles file, which you should include and note where to put it. The user will also need some kind of theme patcher to be able to load it.

Regarding compatibility, .msstyles files tend to be tailored to specific OS build. Recently, MS don't make as much changes as in the past regarding its structure. The one I use is modified from the stock one that comes with Win10 Build 17763 and while I haven't noticed any glitches with Win10 Build 19042 using it, I won't claim with 100% certainty that there aren't any.

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Thank you @UCyborg, I didn't know that, I had assumed, obviously wrongly, that any recent theme file would just work if it was loaded!
The only *.msstyles files on my system seem to be default ones.
aero.msstyles and aerolite.msstyles in C:\Windows\Resources\Themes\Aero and aerolite.msstyles and colored.msstyles in C:\Windows\Resources\Themes\Colored.
They don't look like customised files, the dates are wrong on them.
custom.msstyles doesn't seem to exist.
:dubbio:

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You must have taken someone else's theme file then - it refers to %SystemRoot%\resources\Themes\colored\colored.msstyles

Windows loads the default one if it doesn't find it.

@Tonny52 is right though and it doesn't look like there's a setting to set the old start menu style.

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Not someone else's theme, it was set up from scratch on a clean install of Windows 10.
As I said, colored.msstyles is present in that folder so I would have thought it would work.
What happens if you try it?
:dubbio:
This is what is should look like.

2122666766_Screenshot(29).thumb.png.9c0c8b4e44adb72e62b3230307169215.png

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Apologies, read that too fast. Still, looking at the actual content from the official Win10 20H2 Slovenian ISO's install.wim file, it's not there. Haven't seen it in english ISOs neither.

spacer.png

I've read about people using renamed copy of official aero.msstyles as that changes behavior when it comes to coloring windows' title bar.

2 hours ago, Dave-H said:

What happens if you try it?

I get similar appearance as on your screenshot. Inactive windows' title bar is white then, which I believe is connected to aero.msstyles being loaded with its original name.

Edited by UCyborg
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It sounds like it might be at least a starting point for @Tengereckito get the look he wants back then.
:yes:
Thinking about it more, I now remember that I did some of the customisation using Classic/Open Shell.
My inactive windows' title bars are grey, not white, as in my screen grab. That might well have been a Open Shell thing, as was the colour of the taskbar.
Active windows' title bars are blue.
:)

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1 hour ago, Dave-H said:

My inactive windows' title bars are grey, not white, as in my screen grab.

There's still a bit of blue in there, it was solid white on my end.

I don't know if anything can be done about builtin start menu tiles. In older builds, it's possible to color individual program's tiles by placing a special XML file in a program's directory that specifies color and what image to use as a tile icon, but the color parameter is ignored now.

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