Change Selection and Highight Colors in Windows

You don’t need to be a computer whiz to personalize your Windows PC. Even by default, it comes with a decent amount of options to tweak visuals.

However, it’s in our nature to want even more, with most users complaining about the lack of even more advanced features offered by third-party applications. Installing customization programs is not the best solution, because there are chances for compatibility issues to occur.

Colors are the main target, with implemented options to select a single one, or even make the taskbar change its color according to the one used on your desktop wallpaper. Sadly, this does not affect selection boxes. If you don’t want to install any other programs to change this, tweaking registries gets the job done.

Customizing selection box colors

Activating translucent selection rectangle (optional):

Step 1: Press Win + S to bring up Search.

Step 2: Write down Performance or Appearance and choose to Adjust the Appearance and Performance of Windows.

Step 3: In the Visual Effects tab, look for the Show Translucent Selection Rectangle entry, and make sure it’s enabled.

Note: A lot of other visual aspects can be tweaked here, such as shadows, and window animations.

Changing selection color:

Step 1: Press Win + R to launch the Run utility.

Step 2: Write down regedit and hit enter to launch the Registry Editor.

Step 3: Navigate to this location: Computer - > HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Control Panel -> Colors.

Note: There are two Strings of interest here, Highlight and HotTrackingColor. Each contains three numerical values between 0-255 separated by space, and represent RGB color values.

Step 4: Double-click Highlight or HotTrackingColor and change the value to a custom color. Do the same for the other item.

Step 5: Close the Registry Editor. Log off and log back in to have changes apply, or restart your computer.

Note: Be sure to create a backup of registries in case you want to quickly bring back default values.

Hint: There are several applications you can use to find RGB color codes, just like Jedi Color Picker.