Windows 10 Creators Update Could Introduce New Themes, Including Paid Ones

The upcoming Windows 10 Redstone 2 update, officially called Creators Update, will come with a plethora of changes, some of which have already been confirmed by Microsoft, but there are also some other features that the company is still experimenting with in existing builds.

One of them is better support for themes, with a new report suggesting that Microsoft could bring new visual styles in the Windows Store with the release of the Creators Update.

And while this seems to be a logical step for Microsoft, it appears that the tech giant is also pondering the possibility of selling themes in the Store, although we doubt that the company itself will actually offer themes that are not available free of charge.

A screenshot that’s been posted online recently shows some themes that indeed are available with a small fee, but this is just an experiment for the time being, and Microsoft could change its mind before the feature goes live. On the other hand, it could be a hint that Microsoft might allow others to create their own themes and sell them in the Store.

More advanced themes

Microsoft previously offered a theme repository on its website, and they were delivered as MSStyle files, but the amount of changes a theme brought was minimal, to say the least. In most of the cases, themes only changed colors of the taskbar and the wallpaper, with a few others also bringing new sounds and mouse cursors.

But if themes are indeed published in the store and are sold for a price, they are also likely to come with more advanced functionality, including changes to other parts of the operating system, such as the Action Center and even File Explorer -there’s a rumor that Microsoft’s file manager could go universal, so Microsoft might expand theme support to this app as well, although it would most likely launch with light and dark visual styles at first.

For the moment, keep in mind that Microsoft is still testing new features on internal builds, so many changes are likely to occur in the coming months before the Creators Update gets the go-ahead.