How can one make the title bar text/buttons have better contrast on dark colors in Windows 8?
When Windows 8 color setting are set to a very dark color, such as black or navy blue, the title bar text and the minimize/maximize buttons are nearly invisible. This makes dark colors difficult to work with.
In Windows 7 there was an advanced color options, this is gone in 8. The registry keys associated with this seem to still be present, but they have no effect.
Is there a way to change this? Or a third party application that can do it? I don't want to use the ugly high contrast theme, I want to use the nice Win 8 theme with a dark color.
Solution 1:
What I did was go to this website http://virtualcustoms.net/showthread.php/51048-Aero-8 and download the theme. Then go to this website http://uxstyle.com/ and install the download from there.
What to do:
Install UxStyle - enables third party themes. Be sure to get the Windows 8 download.
Install Aero 8 theme - makes your windows look like the following pic...
I hope this was useful for you as it did the trick for me.
Here is a screen to show that this is on Windows 8.1 worked on Windows 8 before I upgraded as well.
Solution 2:
Save the following as Dark.theme and run it:
[CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}\DefaultIcon]
DefaultValue=%SystemRoot%\System32\imageres.dll,-109
[CLSID\{59031A47-3F72-44A7-89C5-5595FE6B30EE}\DefaultIcon]
DefaultValue=%SystemRoot%\System32\imageres.dll,-123
[CLSID\{F02C1A0D-BE21-4350-88B0-7367FC96EF3C}\DefaultIcon]
DefaultValue=%SystemRoot%\System32\imageres.dll,-25
[CLSID\{645FF040-5081-101B-9F08-00AA002F954E}\DefaultIcon]
Full=%SystemRoot%\System32\imageres.dll,-54
Empty=%SystemRoot%\System32\imageres.dll,-55
[Control Panel\Colors]
ActiveTitle=255 255 255
InactiveTitle=255 255 255
InactiveTitleText=255 255 255
TitleText=255 255 255
[Control Panel\Desktop]
Wallpaper=
TileWallpaper=0
WallpaperStyle=10
[VisualStyles]
Path=%SystemRoot%\resources\themes\Aero\AeroLite.msstyles
ColorStyle=NormalColor
Size=NormalSize
[MasterThemeSelector]
MTSM=RJSPBS
Then select the dark color you want:
