Accent color and shades
Windows generates an accent palette based on the current accent color. It consists of 7 colors:
- 3 dark variants (-3, -2 and -1)
- the original accent color (A)
- 3 light variants (+1, +2 and +3)
For the current accent color we'll use #0078D4 (the default accent color). The output values shown bellow were generated on a Windows 11 machine.
For simplicity, you can get a specific accent color shade from one of the following variables:
Variable | Example color output |
---|---|
accent_light (or accent_dark_mode) | |
accent_normal | |
accent_dark (or accent_light_mode) |
Here's an example for printing them in the console:
import winaccent
print(f"accent_light: {winaccent.accent_light}") # winaccent.accent_dark_mode returns the same color
print(f"accent_normal: {winaccent.accent_normal}")
print(f"accent_dark: {winaccent.accent_dark}") # winaccent.accent_light_mode returns the same color
If you need a different shade than the ones listed above, here's the complete list of variables:
Variable | Example color output |
---|---|
accent_light_3 | |
accent_light_2 | |
accent_light_1 | |
accent_normal | |
accent_dark_1 | |
accent_dark_2 | |
accent_dark_3 |
import winaccent
print(f"accent_light_3: {winaccent.accent_light_3}")
print(f"accent_light_2: {winaccent.accent_light_2}")
print(f"accent_light_1: {winaccent.accent_light_1}")
print(f"accent_normal: {winaccent.accent_normal}")
print(f"accent_dark_1: {winaccent.accent_dark_1}")
print(f"accent_dark_2: {winaccent.accent_dark_2}")
print(f"accent_dark_3: {winaccent.accent_dark_3}")
Note
accent_dark_mode
, accent_light
and accent_light_2
return the same color. accent_light_mode
, accent_dark
and accent_dark_1
also return the same color.
Note
The accent palette generation algorithm is slightly different in Windows 11 from the one in Windows 10. Here's an example with the #FF8C00 (Gold) accent color on both Windows 10 and 11:
Note
In Windows 8.x there's no accent palette generation algorithm. For maintaining compatibility, winaccent will automatically generate a palette using a custom algorithm that tries to immitate the one from Windows 10. It's not perfect, but there's still room for improvement.
Using the same accent color as in the example above with Windows 10 and 11 on Windows 8.1 will give this result (Windows 8.0 is limited to only a few predefined accent colors):
You can also try it without installing anything here.
Warning
The color variables will return the colors in HEX strings (e.g. #RRGGBB
). If you need an RGB tuple instead of a HEX color string, use the hex_to_rgb()
function. See HEX string color to RGB integer tuple function for more information.
Note
You can also force winaccent to use the accent color provided by DWM (ColorizationColor
in Windows 8.x and AccentColor
in Windows 10 and 11 in the registry) and generate the accent palette accordingly. To do that, you have to enable the get_accent_from_dwm
flag. See get_accent_from_dwm
flag for more information.
You may want to take a look at Microsoft's accent color guidelines. You can do that here.