Personalize your desktop

By Ed Bott

Longtime Windows users probably remember the concept of themes from the earliest days of the operating system, when Microsoft included custom themes as part of extra-cost Plus packs.

Surprisingly, themes have survived and even thrived in Windows 10. You can find a custom Themes tab in Settings > Personalization, with each custom theme automatically saving the desktop background image, the color used for accents in windows and menu text, sounds, and the color and size of the mouse pointer.

To save your current collection of those settings as a named theme, open the Themes page in Settings and click Save Theme. Enter a descriptive name and observe as your new theme appears in the list of saved themes. You can reapply those settings with a single click later.

To save the theme so you can share it with someone else (or apply it to a different PC), right-click the thumbnail for your saved theme and then click Save Theme For Sharing. The saved file has the .deskthemepack extension and can be applied by double-clicking.

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