How to change the title color of programs in Windows 8?

I would like to change the color of the window title text on:

• Windows 8 Professional x64
• With all Aero features enabled
• On the desktop (not in MUI mode)

Have tried various existing solutions for Windows 7 Aero and they don't work on Windows 8. Is there any way to do this on Windows 8?

The red ellipse in the below screenshot was added by me; clearly, it is not part of the actual UI. I just wanted to draw attention to the actual text whose color I want to change (ideally, without changing text elsewhere in the operating system, besides window text!)

Solution 1:

You can modify single colors when you switch to the Aero Lite style themes.

To do that, you need to export a theme (preferably the one you're currently using). The .themepack files are actually CAB files and can be edited like those (simply change the file extension or add .cab at the end of it). They will contain a .theme file which is actually an INI.

Find the VisualStyles section and change the Path property:

[VisualStyles]
Path=%SystemRoot%\resources\themes\Aero\AeroLite.msstyles

If you apply that theme now, you will see some changes to the UI already, which are most likely undesirable. But I wanted to show this approach anyway.

You can now set the colors in the same .theme file, like so:

[Control Panel\Colors]
InactiveTitleText=20 20 20
TitleText=0 128 255

.theme files can be applied to the system by simply processing them with the default application assigned to the file type.