Control the color of individual start menu tiles
In Windows 10, the start menu tiles all have the same background color, determined by the color theme you choose.
However, the Microsoft Office tiles (e.g. Excel, Word) each have different colors - Word is blue, Excel is green, etc.
Is there any way to set individual colors on other tiles? E.g. could I set Visual Studio to be purple and Evernote to be green?
To be clear, I don't want to control the overall theme - e.g. I don't want all tiles to be green instead of grey - I want to control the tile colors individually.
4 Answers
There is help on changing tiles that are shortcuts to exe files here:
[Tip] Customize Start Screen Tiles Background Color, Text Color and Logo in Windows 8.1 and Later
and there are some utilities that do it for you. Here's one:
It would be nice if this was built in.
2- Locate the
.exefor the tile
a. Right click the tile icon, and select "Open File Location"
b. Then right click the shortcut icon, and select "Open File Location" again Create a new file named
EXE_Name.VisualElementsManifest.xmland add the following contents:<Application xmlns:xsi=""> <VisualElements BackgroundColor="#666666" ShowNameOnSquare150x150Logo="on" ForegroundText="light"/> </Application>- Rename the shortcut to refresh the image cache
The previous technique doesn't seem to work on Windows Store / Universal apps, but I can't find anything that does.
4I had a black tile on my desktop, and couldn't change the color. After countless efforts, I decided to unpin it. Then I proceeded to re-pin the app. This time it came up a beautiful blue color!
0A quick fix is to change all tiles to a color that matches your menu background color.
This is easy an way to fix things if your biggest concern is wanting the color of the app's icon to stand out so that your eyes find the app the faster.
Right click on your desktop background and select 'Personalize'.
In the left column, click 'Colors'.
In the right pane under Choose your color select whatever you want the menu background color to be. I chose 'dark'.
Just below that is 'Choose your accent color'. Pick a color very similar or the same as the color you just chose above. I chose a very dark gray so that the tiles will just be visible against the menu background.
That's it! Now, for example, when you're looking for your Evernote app which has a green and white icon, the tile behind it will blend in with the menu and your eyes will find the green and white much more quickly.
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