And use a solid color instead of a typical background

Jun 21, 2018 12:42 GMT  ·  By

Changing the wallpaper has become one of the first things that most people do after installing Windows 10, and there are many users who replace the background with a new photo every once in a while to keep the desktop looking fresh.

Needless to say, there are many, many apps out there that can take care of everything, automatically retrieving new wallpapers and setting them as desktop background based on a set of user-defined options.

There are many users, however, who like to keep things simple, and instead of a desktop wallpaper, what they want is just a solid color, like black, to clearly see their icons and work more efficiently.

This mostly happens in working environments where nobody wants to waste their time getting new wallpapers and changing the background on a regular basis, but instead focus on their daily activities and complete them as easy as possible.

How to remove the wallpaper

Fortunately, Microsoft is offering an easy to use option to remove the wallpaper and switch to a solid color, though it’s not as simple to find as you’d expect it to be.

This setting isn’t placed in the personalization screen where such an option would make sense, but instead is located in the Ease of Access section.

Option to remove the desktop wallpaper and use a solid color

So to remove the wallpaper from the Windows 10 desktop, navigate to the following path and set the toggle to off:

Settings > Ease of Access > Display > Show desktop background image The same menu allows you to change a series of other settings, like disabling animations and transparency and automatically hide scroll bars in the operating system.

Additionally, you can switch to a solid color from the Personalization screen in the Settings app. In this case, you need to navigate to:

Settings > Personalization > Background In the drop-down menu, replace the photo option with solid color, and in the table below, choose the background color that you want to use on the desktop. Keep in mind that this is also the accent color that would be displayed across the rest of the operating system.
Option to remove the desktop wallpaper and use a solid color

Others things you should know

At first glance, simply removing the desktop wallpaper and sticking with a solid color instead isn’t rocket science, though there are a few things that you should keep in mind when making such a change.

First and foremost, the solid color that shows up on your desktop is the accent color that you choose for the rest of the operating system. To change this setting, head over to the following path:

Settings > Personalization > Colors > Windows colors You can choose any of the colors in the table or you can create your own custom color should you want to (this option is only available in Windows 10 April 2018 Update and it’s not displayed in the original version of the operating system, for example).

Also, if you choose to use a solid background, whenever you attempt to set a new desktop background, this task has no effect. Using an image on the desktop is only possible after re-enabling the aforementioned option in the Settings app, so you have to toggle the switch back to on in order for the photo to be displayed on the desktop.

On the other hand, if you do select a new photo to be used as wallpaper, all changes are made in the background, so when re-enabling the said option, you should see the new image already on the desktop.

More options for your desktop background are available in Settings > Personalization > Background, though you won’t be getting too many configuration settings.

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Option to remove the desktop wallpaper and use a solid colorOption to remove the desktop wallpaper and use a solid color
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