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.

windows-10

Fijjit

Posted 2016-01-19T15:50:37.160

Reputation: 243

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:

Windows Tile Color Changer

It would be nice if this was built in.

Phlamajam

Posted 2016-01-19T15:50:37.160

Reputation: 136

Great - thanks very much! The Windows Tile Color Changer works well, although it's a pain that the list of applications isn't in alphabetical order - takes ages to find what you're looking for in the list. – Fijjit – 2016-01-19T19:45:09.093

The Windows Tile Color Changer has a virus according to VirusTotal.com - I narrowed it down to one file: MetroFramework.dll v1.3.0. When I downloaded the same exact file from NuGet and unzipped it, that version did not have the virus. - https://www.nuget.org/packages/MetroFramework-1.3.0.0/

– Wayne Bloss – 2018-07-30T22:23:26.213

For Desktop Apps:

Locate the .exe for 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.xml and add the following contents:

<Application xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
    <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.

KyleMit

Posted 2016-01-19T15:50:37.160

Reputation: 3 308

2Renaming the shortcut is subject to cause it to be unpinned. If you just toggle the Windows State (i.e. Run drop-down: Normal | Minimized | Maximized), or change something in the Comment field, then it will refresh (make sure to hit Apply). – Drew Chapin – 2019-01-17T19:40:00.773

For application running in compatibility mode, it still works but you have to locate the executable yourself because step 1b does lead to it. – Futal – 2019-08-16T06:48:38.867

I 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!

George

Posted 2016-01-19T15:50:37.160

Reputation: 1