About two years ago, when Windows 8 Consumer Preview was released to the public, a Windows enthusiast had released a free tool called My WCP Charms Bar Customizer to fully customize the newly introduced Charms bar. The tool let users change the default search, share, devices, settings, and Windows logo icons in the Charms bar with custom ones.
As some of you have probably discovered by know, the tool isn’t fully compatible with Windows 8 RTM and Windows 8.1 RTM versions. Users who don’t’ like the default set of icons used in the Charms bar can now use a newly released tool to fully customize the Charms bar in Windows 8.1.
Door2Windows, the site behind Start button changer and many other popular programs, has recently released a new tool called Windows 8.1 Charms Bar Customizer to customize the default look of the Charms bar, the small bar that appears along the right edge of the screen when you move the mouse cursor to the upper or lower-right corner of the screen in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 versions.
With Windows 8.1 Charms Bar Customizer, you can replace the default share, search, Windows logo, devices, and settings icons in the Charms bar with custom ones.
Customizing the Charms bar using Charms Bar Customizer is a cake walk. Download the zip file of Charms Bar Customizer (download link available at the end of this article), extract the downloaded zip file to get the executable, run Charms bar executable, click on the image that you would like to change, browse to the image file that you would like to use (Charms bar customizer automatically re-sizes the selected image for the right dimension), and then click the Change button to apply the new icon. Charms Bar Customizer will automatically restart the Windows Explorer (File Explorer) to apply the change.
The Restore button can be used to revert to the original Charms bar icons.
Charms Bar Customizer is fully compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 8.1 systems. Note that when you click the Change button to replace default icons with new ones, you might see “Charms Bar Customizer has stopped working” message and might get a blank screen. To restart File Explorer and see your desktop, press Ctrl + Shift + Esc keys to open Task Manager, click File menu, click Run new task, type Explorer.exe, and then press enter key to launch Windows Explorer.
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