Installing a new theme pack is probably the easiest way of customizing Windows 7 and Windows 8. Just like Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10 also ship with a bunch of good themes and hundreds of new themes are always available at the official themes gallery page.
Another cool thing is that all Windows 7 themes are compatible with Windows 10 and Windows 8, which means hundreds of official themes available at the themes gallery page and thousands of unofficial Windows 7 themes can be installed on Windows 8 and Windows 10 without a problem.
Windows theme packs contain desktop backgrounds, window color, and may contain custom mouse cursor, sound scheme, screen saver, and icons.
Create your own Windows 10/8 theme
Users who would like to create their own Windows 10/8 themes by including cool wallpapers, cursor, sound scheme, screen saver, and icons can follow the given below instructions.
Step 1: Right-click on desktop and click Personalize to open Personalization window. On Windows 10, you need to open Control Panel, change the View by Small Icons, and then click Personalize to open Personalization window.
Step 2: To create a new theme, click on Desktop Background, click the Browse button next to Picture location to browse to the folder containing your favourite images. Note that you can’t select multiple folders at once. So, if you have pictures at multiple locations, we suggest you move all your favorite pictures to a folder and then choose that folder as your picture location.
Make sure that the images that you select aren’t too small or too low-resolution, as they might look low-quality. We recommend a picture with 1920 x 1200 resolution for the best result.
Step 3: To set the duration of the slideshow, change the value in Change picture every box. Click Save changes button.
Step 4: Switch back to Personalization window. If you want to include a custom sound scheme, you need to first customize the current sound scheme. To do that, click Sounds in the Personalization window, select a sound scheme, select the program event that you want to customize and then click the browse button to browse to the media file. Please note that file must be in .wav format.
Step 5: One can also include custom icons for Computer, Recycle Bin, and Network. To include custom icons, you need to first change the default icons of Computer, Network and Recycle Bin.
To do that, on the left pane of Personalization window, click Desktop icons to open Desktop Icon Settings. Here, click on each icon one by one and then click Change Icon button to browse to the custom icon. Once done, click Apply button.
Step 6: Now that we have added wallpapers, icons, and sound scheme to our new theme, lets add a fancy cursor as well. Just like sound schemes and icons, we need to apply the new cursor before including the same in the theme. Once installed, click Change mouse pointers in the left pane of Personalization window, select your new cursor from the drop down list and finally click Apply button.
Step 7: In this step, we are going to add a screen saver to the theme. Click on Screen Saver in the personalization window, select your screen saver from the drop down menu and then click Apply. If you want to include a custom screen saver in the theme, install the screen saver first and then select the same from the drop down menu.
Step 8: You are almost done. Click on Window Color in the personalization window and then click on the first tile to select Automatic color. When this option is turned on, window color automatically changes to match the dominant color of wallpaper. That is, whenever the desktop background changes, Windows automatically changes the window color to match the background.
Step 9: Switch back to Personalization window. An unsaved theme should appear under My Themes. Right-click on the theme, select Save theme for sharing, select a location to save your theme, enter a name for your theme, and finally click Save button. You are done! You can now share your newly created theme with your family and friends so they can enjoy your theme on their desktops as well.
Please note that Windows 8 themes (.deskthemepack) can’t be installed in Windows 7. To use a Windows 8 theme in Windows 7, read our how to install Windows 8 themes in Windows 7 guide.
Dale says
Not even close to delivering on its promise. This is simply limited customizations to existing themes. Have to keep looking to find how themes are actually created for Windows.
Ernie says
Nevermind my last post.. When I tried it, it didn’t work.
Andrew says
I miss the options available in Windows XP, you could customize every color of every single piece! Scrollbars could be different than everything else. I’m using a laptop which has no contrast controls on the monitor. So everything is bright and blinding and I can’t do anything about it! I changed my Win8 theme to a High Contrast, basically all the backgrounds are black. So now I can see everything without going blind. But on websites like Gmail or Tumblr, certain features are no longer visible on a black background, its like guesswork hovering my mouse. So if I could change it to a dark grey, still not blinding, but enough of a scale to show the other buttons? There must be an app for this somewhere! I’m using an app which gave me back the Start button. C’mon you geeks, help us!
Randomx says
I agree with Shawn..however, for different reasons as well as what he had said.
This isn’t exactly ‘creating a windows 8 theme’..it’s just changing the look of your pre-loaded theme that you got with windows 8.
This wasn’t helpful for me, because I was hoping that this page would actually give me a guide on how to create a custom theme such as the one’s shown here: http://tinyurl.com/aewtvbs
shawn says
none of this is even remotely helpful. where is the border color option, where is the individual text color/font options. this page is as pointless as it can get……