Win10 Dark Theme for SGP

Sequence Generator
8

OK. I think I figured out a way to make it work withing Win10 (as updated today, anyway).

First, you need two custom themes, one standard and one High Contrast.

Let’s make the standard one first.

  1. Open settings and navigate to Themes (Personalization->Themes)
  2. Scroll down to “Apply a Theme” and choose which ever one you want (or go get a new one from the web). Click it to apply it.
  3. Modify the theme, using either Background or Color. Make it something you like; I just swapped out the picture for a nice dark blue background. The reason we are doing this is so Windows will force us to save a custom theme.
  4. Click the back button to accept your change and go back to the Themes panel. Now you will see a “Save Theme” button.
  5. Click the Save Theme button and give the your new theme a name. I used “Daylight”.
  6. Open file explorer and navigate to C:\Users<your_user_name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Themes. You should see your new theme in this directory. Leave this window open as we are going to use it again.

Now, we need to make another theme that will become the SGP dark mode theme.

  1. Back in the Themes panel in Settings, scroll down to “Related Settings” and click “High contrast settings”.
  2. Under “Use High contrast”, click to turn the button on. Your screen will change to one that has a lot of black and bright colors.
  3. Under “Select a colored rectangle to customize high contrast colors”, click any rectangle and change the color to anything. It doesn’t matter; all we are doing is making Windows generate a custom high contrast theme for us.
  4. Click the “Apply” button and choose a name for your new, custom high contrast theme. I used “Nightlight”. You should see your new theme appear in the Windows Explorer windows, from above.
  5. Open the new Nightlight theme in NotePad and replace the “[Control Panel\Colors]” section with the one from the SGP dark mode theme. Save the file.

Log off and back on to force Windows to reload your local profile. I don’t know if this is definitely necessary, but it certainly doesn’t hurt.

To change to the Daylight theme:

  1. Open Settings->Personalization->Themes
  2. Scroll down to “Apply a theme” and click you Daylight theme.

To change to the Nightlight theme:

  1. Open Settings->Personalization->Themes
  2. Scroll down to “Related Settings”.
  3. Click “High contrast settings”
  4. Under “Use high contrast”, click the “Turn on high contrast” button so it is “On”.
  5. Under “Choose a theme”, select your Nightlight theme.

I copied the two files from the Windows Explorer window to the desktop and can now double-click them to change between the two themes. It’s a bit faster than navigating through Settings.

Let me know if this works for you. I don’t know why Win10 makes themes so complicated…

  • Shane