From custom backgrounds to themes and to accent colors, Windows 10 already has quite a few personalization options. But some elements of Windows 10 remain the same color regardless of your accent color and theme, unless you use an app like Accent Applicator.
The app is straightforward and just quietly runs in the background. You can customize it or just have it change things to your accent color by default.
It's available for free on Windows 10 PCs and is also a great example of a good app that uses Project Centennial.
What you can change
The main purpose of the app is to turn elements on your PC that are usually blue by default to whatever color you'd like. Specifically, you can change the colors for active captions, selected items, selected menu items, and hyperlinks.
Accent Applicator also takes your accent color and applies it within win32 apps as illustrated on Twitter by user Cadenzza.
I actually found a nice app on Windows Store that implements your accent color in win32 apps: https://t.co/wKGS4TtwUI pic.twitter.com/kF06PYJHySI actually found a nice app on Windows Store that implements your accent color in win32 apps: https://t.co/wKGS4TtwUI pic.twitter.com/kF06PYJHyS— Cadenzza (@cadenzza_) October 16, 2017October 16, 2017
For each of the items that you can customize, you also have the option to tweak the color and brightness. For example, you can make it so when you highlight text, the background is red and the text is white, or the background is black and the text is red, or any other combination you'd like. We chose red in our photos because it is noticeably not blue but the app works well with many colors.
It Just Works
They say no news is good news and that's the case for Accent Applicator. After we set it up it just worked. It changes things in real time without visible lag, has enough customization that you can make specific elements look different throughout your system, and it doesn't take up much memory and requires almost no processing power.
In our testing Accent Applicator clocked in at 0% on our CPU and only used around 8.2MB of memory. These a relatively inconsequential sacrifice to gain the functionality that the app provides.
Overall thoughts
The number one question surrounding this app is why isn't this functionality built into Windows 10 already? This seems like the type of thing that should be baked into the Settings app somewhere but since it isn't, it's very nice to have Accent Applicator available.
It's hard to imagine much more anyone would want from an app like this. It's an example of something you can download, setup, and just forget about as it makes your PC look better.
