Of course! This was made possible by several tools. You will end up with the following appearance:ĭo you like these themes? Do you miss the good old classic theme in Windows 10? Tell us in comments. Switch back to the Aerolite based-theme.Switch to the default Windows 10 theme and re-use that color in Personalization so the Metro skin of the Classic Shell menu gets that color.It will add a custom color to your Personalization - Colors settings page. Set the desired classic theme port as your Windows 10 theme.I also have a collection of similar themes for Windows 8.x here.įinally, if you are using the Classic Shell Start Menu, it has an ' XP Classic Retro' skin available that makes the Start menu natively blend in with these classic themes.Īnother way to make the Start Menu look nicer is to use the 'Metro' skin of Classic Shell (it is shipped by default): Using the color palette of Windows XP, I successfully reproduced all 17 classic themes, which are:Įach theme is just a *.theme file. Luckily, it supports custom colors without patching or third party apps. There is a hidden 'Aero Lite' theme in Windows 10 which is used as the base for High Contrast themes. I managed to get something that looks close to the original classic themes. However, let's not go into that territory. The Aero engine, which is the only one available in Windows 10 (and Windows 8), has no support for title bar gradients unless system files are patched. Microsoft has removed support for most color and font metrics and only keeps themes based on visual styles. Windows 10 comes without the classic theme engine. Unfortunately, there is no direct way to get the exact appearance of any of the classic themes, especially the ones which have title bar gradients. They have a special place in my heart as a reminder of the good old times of Windows 2000, which was my favorite operating system for many years. Advertisement I always liked how classic themes looked.

Windows 10 themes not working