Windows 10: How to change FileExplorer(windows explorer)background to Grey

It's been posted in Customisation a number of times. Hope you find it useful.
QTTabBar - QuizoApps
- it's donationware.. no fixed fee - where did you find that pricing?

 

Hi, thank you all for you tips helped me a lot. Right now I am using a low contrast theme from Devianart in my Windows 10 PRO Anniversay (1607), today (thanks to you guys) I discover QTTabBar and PangoBright to reduce the brightness of my monitor, however I can´t change the background color of Word/Excel/PowerPoint, it looks like the trick of tweaking color in the registry it is not working in Anniversary edition *Sad

If anybody knows how to do it I will appreciate tell me why

If this helps to someone, I have discovered a way to surf the web and avoid "eye strain", you must use Chrome with 2 plugins
1) G.lux: G.lux - Chrome Web Store Can change the temperature of the site and lowers the general contrast.
2) Change Colors: Change Colors - Chrome Web Store
You can change the background and text color to taste, I use it with websites with black background and white texts.

PS: Please excuse my poor english, I speak spanish and the english it is not my language. Sorry

 

Hi, if you have a look at, say, Wordpad, I can change its background (and hence many other areas) - in that sense dealing with explorer using Qttabbar filled in the gap.

I use the well-known registry mod. (required since MS removed the relevant dialogue box present in Win 7). However, that colour is lost on resume from Sleep/Hibernation... but from Win 8 on I have used a trick I developed to deal with that.

I don't use MS Office, but I seem to recall you need to use a setting within Word to change its background.

So there can be 3 things to do:
- the registry hack + a fix to keep colours on resuming
- Qttabbar - explorer related windows incl Control Panel
- Specific program options

I also use Redshift GUI which I found works better than F.lux to soften colours for night-time use.

 

Thank you dalchina for your reply, however how I said the "registry hack" doesn´t work in my Windows 10 PRO Anniversay, nothing happens *Sad

 

I know you said that. Are we talking about the same one?
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors]
"Window"="250 250 177"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\Colors]
"Window"="250 250 177"
There's mine for a pale yellow- it works for me.



Could you post yours?

 

dalsina, I reboot and then try again and it worked *Smile

Also I have discovered a way to avoid the colores return to default after reboot: you must go to "Local Policy Editor" or something like that (sorry my Windows is in spanish) then go to User Configuration/Control Panel/Personalization then look for this entries and change to "enable":
- Prevent changing color scheme (or something like that)
- Prevent changing theme (or something like that)
- Prevent changing color and personalization (or something like that)
Here is an image of my system with the entries with a red dot.

 

Ok, good..

My colours don't change on reboot.. no need to fiddle with gpedit. Sthg else is happening if yours do (which)?

 

Sorry I don´t understand the last question.
I was able to change the colors with the registry trick, however when I turn off or reboot the colors back to default (255, 255, 255), when I did the changes in the "Local Policy Editor" the colors don´t change.

 

Sorry - 'which?' = 'which colours?' but you're clearly referring to the ones changed by the reg. hack.

Ok, are you reapplying a theme when you reboot?

Try this: with the changed colour applied in normal mode, restart to Safe Mode.
I see the colour applied there too.

This should avoid anything that overrides your setting.

 

No, the only thing that changed on reboot was the colors tweaked with the "registry trick" (background color of the apps like Word, Excel, etc.), however since I did the changes in the "Local Policy Editor" the colors never change again, problem solved.

 

Try sleep and resume from sleep if you would.. (wondering if your gpedit changes affect that).

It should not be necessary to make those changes with gpedit.msc - something is changing those registry locations that isn't happening on mine. Anyway, glad you're happy with that.

 

Sleep and resume from sleep don´t change the colors.

Thank you for your help.

 

Ok, thanks, I thought that would be the case.

It's finally clicked as to what's happening - I dealt with this about 3 years ago!

When you restarted without the gpedit changes the existing theme (without your colour) is reapplied automatically. Hence you lost the colour on restart. Had you saved your current theme with the colour applied (which is what I did), then you would have retained the colours on restart.

 

Yes I have saved the theme with the color tweaks applied, however everytime after reboot the colors changes again, when I checked the theme were applied a "no saved theme" (or something like that) not my saved theme, however after gpedit tweaks this never happen again (the colors and the theme selected remain)
Sorry for my grammar, my english sucks *Sad

Thank you again. Muchas gracias por todos, saludos.-

 

¡Que tenga muy buena suerte!