How To Create A Windows 7 Theme
You may have seen our article last month on how to add lots of Windows 7 country themes to your collection of already pre-loaded themes on Microsoft’s latest OS… But what if you want to be able to have your own collection of pictures and wallpapers displaying on your desktop? Well, you can create your own theme for Windows 7 in just a few simple steps, or just create a desktop slideshow for simplicity.
In previous versions of Windows, if you wanted a picture to be displayed as your desktop wallpaper, you could right click that picture and select ‘Set as Desktop Background’, but if you wanted to cycle through wallpapers, you had to use a third party program such as this Windows Vista wallpaper changer. Don’t worry, the basic option is still there in Windows 7, but you also have another option…
If you want a group of pictures as your background, like when you have a theme set up, you can select the desired group of pictures all at once. If you right click the current selection, you’ll still find the ‘Set as Desktop Background’ option, but this will set every picture you selected as your wallpaper, allowing you to quickly change through selections of wallpapers without having to create a theme for Windows 7!…
If you want to make a complete theme pack instead, you’ll still need to do the above to set your desktop background(s), but there’s an extra step or two before you have your theme! Go to Control Panel, and under ‘Appearance and Personalization’ select the ‘Change desktop background option’. From here, you can choose how often the picture changes – I chose 15 minutes, but you can select it to change as quickly as 10 seconds, or even every day…
Depending on how much tweaking you want to do to your theme, you can also change the colour of your windows to get that personal feel back to your PC! To do this, you need to go back into the Personalization section of your Control Panel where you can view all your themes. You’ll notice four choices along the bottom of this window: Desktop Background, Window Color, Sounds and Screen Saver. To change the colour of your windows, start menu and taskbar, select the “Window Color” option…
This does what it says on the tin and allows you to change the colour of all your Windows with various options – you can select whatever colour you want to use, decide whether or not to make your windows transparent (I prefer mine transparent, so I’ll keep this checked) and choose the intensity of the colour. When choosing your colour and intensity, I’d recommend quickly cycling through your wallpapers to make sure it looks ok with all your choices by right clicking anywhere on your desktop and selecting ‘Next desktop background’. When you’re happy with your choice, save the changes and you’ll be back to the previous Personalisation screen.
Next up is System Sounds – this is rather straightforward as you have a number of sound schemes to choose from by default from the drop down list at the top of the window. You can preview each sound by selecting it from the ‘Program Events’ list box and hitting the ‘Test’ button to see what it sounds like. When you’re happy with the scheme you’ve chosen, press OK…
Finally, you can also add a screen saver to your theme. You have quite a few pre-loaded ones to choose from, including the old school 3D text option! If you don’t like any of the defaults, there are many places you can download one from. After selecting the screen saver and returning to the Personalization window again, you’re all set up!…
If you want to tweak things a little more, you can change your mouse pointer or be a little more adventurous! Don’t forget to save your theme when you’re done – to do this just right click on the “Unsaved Theme” and select either “Save theme” or “Save theme for sharing”. If you save it for sharing, you can save it as a .themepack file and upload it to the internet or share it with your friends. If you select save theme, it will just be saved in ‘My Themes’. Don’t worry, if you want to share it at a later date you can save for sharing at another time. Enjoy your Windows 7 themes!
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