There are many things that are improved in Windows 10, and the Personalization options are one of them. For instance, you can set your own lock screen wallpapers, you can switch between light and dark modes, you can set the accent color for the Start menu, taskbar, title bar, etc.
In Windows 10 whenever you try to set an Accent color, that color automatically applies to the Taskbar, Start menu, and the Action Center. There are no options in the Settings app to set the colors to each element individually. However, if you just want to apply the accent color to the Taskbar, then you can do that with a simple registry edit. Here’s how.
Note: before doing anything, make sure that you have a good backup of your Windows Registry. It gives you a fallback if you messed up the registry.
Apply Accent Color Only to Taskbar in Windows 10
Before applying the accent color only to the taskbar, you first need to enable and set the accent color. To do that, right-click on the taskbar and then select the option “Settings.”
The above action will open the Windows 10 Settings app. Here, select the option “Personalization.” This is where you can customize different things like colors, lock screen, background wallpaper, etc.
In the Personalization window, navigate to the “Colors” tab appearing on the left pane.
Now, select the accent color from the color palette, and then toggle the button under “Show color on taskbar, start menu, and action center.”
With the above action, you’ve enabled and set the accent color. As you see, the color is applied to all three elements.
Now we can proceed to modify this behavior. To start, search for regedit in the Start menu and open it. Alternatively, you can also use the Windows Run command (Win + R) and type regedit.
After opening the Windows Registry Editor, navigate to the following location:
HKEY_CURRENT_USERSOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionThemesPersonalize
Once there, find the DWORD value “ColorPrevalence,” and double-click on it.
As soon as you double click, the “Edit DWORD 32-bit Value” window will open. Here, change the Value Data from “1” to “2,” and then click on the “OK” button to save the changes.
Once you are done with that, this is what it looks like in the Windows Registry.
After changing the DWORD value, either restart your system or re-login to make the changes take effect. As you can see from the below image, the accent color is now only applied to the taskbar.
The good thing about this approach is that the setting will stay intact even when you change the accent color. However, if you disable the accent color by toggling the button under “Show color on taskbar, start menu and action center,” the DWORD value will reset.
So, when you re-enable the accent color, it will be applied to all the three elements.
If you don’t want to go through the whole process each and every time you enable or disable the accent color, then backing up the registry key can help you restore the setting quickly. To back up the key, make the changes as detailed above and select the option “Export” from the File menu.
Now, select the destination and file name and click on the “Save” button to save the backup. From now on, whenever you want to apply the accent color only to the taskbar, simply double-click on the exported reg key, click on the button “Yes” to confirm the action and you are good to go.
Do comment below sharing your thoughts and experiences about using the above method to apply the accent color only to the taskbar in Windows 10.