Windows 10’s new default theme is very bright, with lots of white — from window backgrounds to white title bars. Microsoft built a dark, black theme into Windows 10, but it’s hidden.
Microsoft has said it will continue working on Windows 10, so it’s possible this feature will be improved and there will be an easy toggle for it in the Settings app in the future. For now, here’s how you have to activate the dark theme.
Update: We’ve been told the registry change only works on the Professional, Enterprise, and Education editions of Windows 10. it won’t work on the Home edition for some reason. We’re looking into it.
Enable a System-wide Dark Theme
Microsoft may eventually add a toggle to the Settings app that switches between a system-wide light theme and dark theme. This is the way it works on Windows Phone. For now, you can still enable a system-wide dark theme — it just requires editing the registry. This will enable the dark theme for quite a few universal apps, but not all of them.You can do this manually with the instructions below, or download our Enable Dark Theme on Windows 10 registry hack. Just double-click the included .reg file to enable the dark theme, and double-click the other included .reg file to re-enable the light theme.
After you run the file, log out and log back in or restart your PC.
if you want to do this by hand, you’ll need to open the registry editor and create the following keys. In earlier builds of Windows 10, this value was named “SystemUsesLightTheme”, but it’s named “AppsUseLightTheme” in the final version of Windows 10.
- Under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes\Personalize, create a DWORD value named “AppsUseLightTheme” with the value of “0”.
- Under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes\Personalize, create a DWORD value named “AppsUseLightTheme” with a value of “0”.
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