Old Appearance control panel: 3rd-party tool?

You all may remember that amazingly detailed little appearance panel that let us do things like change the size of the font in the title bar, change the thickness of window borders, change the font in context menus, change the colors of individual things like the backgrounds in app windows and explorer windows, and many other wonderful things. I think we still had it in 7, but I know for sure we still had it in XP.

Now we have Settings and Personalization. It's not even remotely the same degree of control.

Has anyone seen a third-party tweaker out there that will let users do those individually interesting things in W10?

The control panel is still presant in win10 simply type control panel in the search bar

You all may remember that amazingly detailed little appearance panel that let us do things like change the size of the font in the title bar, change the thickness of window borders, change the font in context menus, change the colors of individual things like the backgrounds in app windows and explorer windows, and many other wonderful things. I think we still had it in 7,

Reminds me of
Peter, Paul and Mary - Where Have All the Flowers Gone (25th Anniversary Concert) - YouTube

- "when will they ever learn"?

Removed in Win 8.

Nearest options: once again.. (just search- free)
SMACC by member Superfly
Classic color panel

Winaero's tweaker includes a few relevant options too.

Ummm, I know that, my friend, but thanks for the thought. If you look closely here, you'll see that the old Appearance control panel ain't there no more. Gone with the wind. And nothing that's natively available in W10 comes even close to the fine-grained control of visual features we had way back when.

I've given you 3 options there... 3 tweak tools. Have you downloaded them already?


I don't have to look closely - I know it's not there.. I used a couple of registry dwords to set background colours that would have been easy if it were..

Hello @Wisewiz,

I am NOT sure if this is the sort of thing that you are talking about, but as an alternative to third-party Tools or Utilities, you can setup a Folder or Shortcut that displays a List of ALL [ EVERYTHING ] the available Control Panel Items individually [ Commonly known as “God Mode” ] by performing the following [ Replace ALL_Tasks with your own Title ] . . .

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To Setup a Folder:

Right-Click the Desktop > New > Folder > Type [ Copy & Paste ] ALL_Tasks.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} > Enter.

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To Setup a Shortcut:

Right-Click the Desktop > New Shortcut > Type [ Copy & Paste ] %WinDir%\Explorer.exe Shell:::{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C} > Next > Type ALL_Tasks > Finish.

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I hope this helps.

@dalchina

Sorry, # 4 was addressed to Samuria.

I'll look into your suggestions, and thank you.

Ah.. sorry- understood. The tools aren't as good as the old appearance panel was, but go some way.
Depends what you want to tweak.

E.g. file explorer backgrounds can only be tweaked using Qttabbar (free).

@dalchina @Paul Black

The extensive searching I've done and done and ... has revealed nothing that would answer the question a member posed this morning here:

taskbar, make system icons larger?

I have no problem with the size of my notification tray icons, even though they are somewhat smaller than my taskbar icons, But the posting questioner does have a problem, and I thought I recalled that the antique Appearance Control offered possibilities. Then again, maybe it didn't. Or wouldn't. Whatever.

Never seen anything like that, I'm afraid.