Win11: 22H2. Custom "Manual" accent colors broken/wrong in Windows 11?

I just upgraded to Windows 11 22H2 from Win10. The first thing I noticed is no matter what I do, I can't change the accent color to the "Manual" custom color I want. When I type the custom color #0D2593 (which is supposed to dark blue), Win11 automatically changes it to Lavendar every time??!! It shows as Lavendar in Recent colors as well. Win10 never had a weird issue on the same PC before I upgraded to Win11.

I search for this issue, I found a couple of vague posts saying it's a Windows 11 bug. However, I can't find any official information on this. Is there at least a work-around for this? Seems like a pretty lame bug to just ignore by Microsoft.

Have just tried this on my system, works fine, I just copy/ pasted your color id from your post, it is indeed dark blue. Same version & build of Windows Pro.
Are you using the dark, light or custom mode?

DigitalGoat said:

Have just tried this on my system, works fine, I just copy/ pasted your color id from your post, it is indeed dark blue. Same version & build of Windows Pro.
Are you using the dark, light or custom mode?

Click to expand...

Hi thanks for replying so quickly. I'm using dark mode. All my theme/color settings are identical to how I had it in Win10. I'm not doing anything different in Win11 that I would normally do in Win10 as far as theme/colors go.

Some apps like Win11 Notepad (and some random older Windows apps) display the title bar color correctly. However, some apps will use the Lavander color.


PS: When I select the accent color to automatically be chosen for me, the accent color is still that Lavender color. I am able to change the color to light blue... but, not matter what I do, I can't choose dark-blue.

@DigitalGoat, would you be kind enough to export/share your registry settings under the below location with the dark blue accent color in Dark Mode?

I have found some posts describing the same exact issue:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...ncorrect/7c8faac2-7054-41ab-9432-7ad3a2500a49

https://betanews.com/2021/12/27/mic...problem-in-windows-11-but-a-fix-is-weeks-away

I'm not saying you don't have the issue, just reporting that mine works correctly, I'm also using dark mode.
here is a screen clip of the registry editor showing that key and the colour of the windows bar, definately dark blue.


[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Accent]
"AccentPalette"=hex:e5,d3,f9,00,c2,b2,f1,00,85,79,e3,00,6e,63,de,00,45,39,d5,00,2a,24,aa,00,14,12,72,00,88,17,98,00
"StartColorMenu"=dword:ffd53945
"AccentColorMenu"=dword:ff93250d

Checked notepad, explorer, Start menu etc, all showing dark blue accent.

Ok, this has me intrigued so I have spent some time swapping accent colors, backgrounds etc and after checking your examples again I think I understand what is going on.
The title bars and other bits of the UI that the accent colour changes are properly affected, some icons and text links throughout the UI will be a shade based on the accent colour modified to remain higher contrast for visibility.
If you change your accent colour to something like dark grey the elements you reference in your image are set to a couple of shades lighter to remain visible on a dark background without using white, which would 'glare' being close to the whiter text causing readability issues, choosing yellow results in the title bar colour and icons being muddy yellow/ goldish while some text is much brighter yellow.
Using light mode is somewhat more consistent.
I think this is intentional and not a bug, maybe a poor design choice though from some points of view.
Just my observations and thoughts.

DigitalGoat said:

Ok, this has me intrigued...

Click to expand...

Not as intrigued as me!!!
Here's my thing...,
I wanted to base my colors on this theme...



... so, I chose the green using W10 Color Control...



... and proceeded to theme up my UI...



... lo and behold, look what Windows chose as the opposite/blend colors, without any input from me...

It can't be easy working out a system where a user chosen colour doesn't result in non readable text or non visible icons/ glyphs, especially when you have to contend with dark, light and custom themes, HDR, variety of graphics drivers, display types, display quality variance, software versions and god knows what else.
Not a job I would relish.

DigitalGoat said:

It can't be easy working out a system where a user chosen colour doesn't result in non readable text or non visible icons/ glyphs, especially when you have to contend with dark, light and custom themes, HDR, variety of graphics drivers, display types, display quality variance, software versions and god knows what else.
Not a job I would relish.

Click to expand...

I've used this same accent color with Dark Mode on Windows 10 for many years. I never had any issues with readability, ever for any app I ever used. It looks like this limitation was added specifically to Win11.

So, were you able to reproduce this same issue on your end using the accent color #0D2593? Does it automatically change the dark blue color to bright purple in some cases (like in the screenshot I posted)? I know at first you mentioned, you can't reproduce this issue when using that accent color.

I'm having a hard time believing that Microsoft intended this specific behavior to be "normal"; at least for a color like the one I chose. I don't see what was wrong with how Windows 10 handled accent colors before. If someone didn't like the color due to readability or whatever, it was at least the user's choice.

I have dealt with this issue since Nov 2022 following the WIN11 upgrade, and after subsequent reinstall methods. I also tried the regedit settings with no resolve, colors are darker than displayed in palette, some do not appear at all once selected in regedit. The accent color depends on the background/theme chosen. Some colors will not appear as they show on the palette and names don't match. Some colors will not work if determined to be too dark or too light for a specific theme or background. I have tried many colors aswell and not getting the color I actually choose; it is many times a darker version of the color than what is displayed in the palette. Choosing an accent color for some themes will not even show and the auto color cannot be changed.

I have a different issue with accent colors and have asked this community several times with no resolve:
I found I could get the accent color on the File Explorer title bar ONLY if I use a theme. I don't like the themes colors offered and I prefer light mode, so I customized a preset theme and the background color/accent color I want. I use light mode, transparency on, show on border/title bars (shows title bar accent color until I shutdown/restart, then back to grey, shows accent color on borders), no show on start/taskbar (however, accent color shows), do not show dropshadow. However, once I shutdown laptop, the File Explorer title bar accent color reverts to grey. It doesn't apply to my profile. The issue is primarily specific to the File Explorer title bar accent color script/boolean configuration for user logon and retention of the settings under Personalization. Somewhere the if, ands and buts are messed up. I have played with the themes, background, and accent color settings extensively and this has been the only resolve I found.

My resolve: I put my laptop to sleep instead of shutdown each night in order to retain my preferred settings and not have to reconfigure at startup every morning.

This can happen when you choose a color that is outside of the color gamut that your display is capable of reproducing, or when the color is too light or too dark to be accurately displayed. In these cases, Windows will try to approximate the color you've selected by choosing a similar hue that is within the display's capabilities.

UPDATE:
All thanks to this post on Reddit, I was able to modify the necessary registry settings to force Windows 11 "Dark Mode" to actually use a nice Dark Blue Accent color along with supporting matching colors. Though, admittedly it was a PITA to setup a custom color palette via registry. I can only image how much more time-consuming it would have been without that Reddit post. The end result is that the colors look right and no readability issues, just like Win10.

I still can't believe what I had to go through just to set up a dark-blue accent color with a matching custom color palette that actually looks good. It's not like I was trying to use a weird/unusual accent color... its just dark-blue; and, looks great in all conditions.

See the attached "Before" screenshot (where it was incorrectly changing my dark-blue color to purple). Also see the "After" screenshot using the attached registry settings. Everything just works without any issues.