Windows 10: Turn On or Off Transparency Effects in Windows 10

How to: Turn On or Off Transparency Effects in Windows 10

How to Turn On or Off Transparency Effects in Windows 10


In Windows 10, you can turn on or off transparency effects for the Start, taskbar, and action center. This will also turn on or off the acryclic Fluent Design effects for Start and UWP apps.

If you are using a high contrast theme, then transparency and blur will be disabled.

If you have transparency turned on, desktop background behind it. You will not see any open windows or desktop icons through the full screen Start.

If you turn off transparency, it will also disable blur.

Starting with Windows 10 build 16241, Microsoft has softened the noise layer of Acrylic Material when you have transparency turned on.

Starting with sign-in screen.

This tutorial will show you how to turn on or off transparency effects for Start, taskbar, action center, and UWP apps Fluent Design for your account in Windows 10.


CONTENTS:

• Option One: To Turn On or Off Transparency Effects in Personalization Settings
• Option Two: To Turn On or Off Transparency Effects in Ease of Access Settings
• Option Three: To Turn On or Off Transparency Effects using a BAT file

EXAMPLE: Transparency effects turned on and off

















OPTION ONE [/i] To Turn On or Off Transparency Effects in Personalization Settings
1. Open Settings, and click/tap on the Personalization icon.

2. Click/tap on Colors on the left side, and turn On (default) or Off Transparency effects under More options on the right side for what you want. (see screenshot below)

3. When finished, you can close Settings if you like.








OPTION TWO [/i] To Turn On or Off Transparency Effects in Ease of Access Settings

*note This option is only available starting with Windows 10 build 17025.
1. Open Settings, and click/tap on the Ease of Access icon.

2. Click/tap on Display on the left side, and turn On (default) or Off Show transparency in Windows for what you want under Simplify and personalize Windows on the right side. (see screenshot below)

3. When finished, you can close Settings if you like.








OPTION THREE [/i] To Turn On or Off Transparency Effects using a BAT file

*note The downloadable .bat files below will modify the DWORD value in the registry key below.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes\Personalize

EnableTransparency DWORD

0 = Turn off
1 = Turn on

1. Do step 2 or step 3 below for what you would like to do.


2. To Turn Off Transparency Effects
A) Click/tap on the Download button below to download the BAT file below, and go to step 4 below.

Turn_Off_Start_Menu_and_Taskbar_Transparency.bat

Download

3. To Turn On Transparency Effects
*note This is the default setting.
A) Click/tap on the Download button below to download the BAT file below, and go to step 4 below.

Turn_On_Start_Menu_and_Taskbar_Transparency.bat

Download
4. Save the .bat file to your desktop, and run the .bat file.

5. If prompted, click/tap on Run to approve.

*note If you like, you can unblock the .bat file to stop getting the Run prompt.

6. You will now notice your screen flicker and a command prompt quickly open and close as explorer is restarted to apply the registry changes.

7. When finished, you can delete the downloaded .bat file if you like.

That's it,
Shawn


Related Tutorials

• How to Enable or Disable Acrylic Blur Effect on Sign-in Screen Background in Windows 10
• How to Allow or Prevent Changing Color and Appearance in Windows 10
• Turn On or Off Acrylic Taskbar Transparency in Windows 10
• Change Color of Start Menu, Taskbar, Title bars, and Action Center in Windows 10
• How to Turn On or Off Color Filters to the Screen in Windows 10
• How to Create a 'Color and Appearance' Shortcut in Windows 10
• Turn On or Off Show Color on Start, Taskbar, and Action Center in Windows 10
• How to Turn On or Off Show Color Only On Taskbar in Windows 10
• How to Change Cortana Search Box Background Transparency in Windows 10
• How to Change Cortana Search Box Highlight Transparency in Windows 10
• How to Change Default App Mode and Windows Mode to Light or Dark Theme Color in Windows 10
• How to Change Theme Mode for Movies & TV app in Windows 10
• How to Change Command Prompt Transparency Level in Windows 10
• How to Change Theme Mode for Photos app in Windows 10

:)

 

How to revert back to older transpency effect from Acrylic transparency on Win10 Fall update?

The new "Acrylic" transparency effect for Windows 10 modern apps and Start Menu is way too too opaque. It looks almost as bad as turning transparency completely off.

Is there a way to revert back to the older transparency effect in Windows 10? The whole point of transparency is to be able to tell what's "behind" windows that are on top. Its not really possible to do that anymore with the almost opaque Acrylic transparency
effect.

It doesn't appear there is any builtin ways to do this. Maybe, it's possible to use a 3rd party tool like Aero Tweaker or something like that? Thanks in advance!

 

Taskbar transparency blurred Windows insider build 17115

I still want to keep transparency but without the massive amount of blur when a window or background is under it

 

A question. Can this settings apply to all users or just HKEY_CURRENT_USER only?

 

Hello evildog1, *Smile

I'm afraid that it's a per user setting. It doesn't appear to do anything if applied to HKLM.

I also don't see a group policy for this yet that could be applied to all users.

 

Ok so i have to make my own program that automatically changing user settings for first time

 

Creating a task in Task Scheduler to run this at log in may be an option.