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I was wondering if it is possible to change the color of the scrollbar in windows 10.

At the moment the color difference between the slider and the background is small enough for me to have to search for it, especially when it is small.

Can this be done natively with windows 10 or if not is there any 3rd party software that I can use to achieve this?

PS, I found this post: How to change the scrollbar color in Windows XP? it seems to be very outdated and the solution looks to be only for winXP, but correct me if I'm wrong.

EDIT: Comments showed that there is no officially supported way by Microsoft. This question is now focused on either MS changing their policy or any unofficial way of solving this problem.

EDIT2: I do know that there is a high contrast mode for windows, but the only thing that I have contrast issues with is scroll bars, as their gray values are very close to each other. It would be totally overkill to use high contrast mode for a small thing like this.

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  • 5
    +1, I'm exactly the very same problem. Am I becoming too old to see sharply ?
    – danidemi
    Commented Aug 22, 2017 at 15:04
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    Here is a discussion about the same subject, they conclude that the color cannot be changed: answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-start/…
    – danidemi
    Commented Aug 22, 2017 at 15:09
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    Incredible that this can't be changed. I'm colour blind and the poor contrast is a constant irritation that has me squinting at the screen to try and find the 'thumb' part that you drag. The only alternative seems to be High Contrast mode, but that's just too extreme
    – Cocowalla
    Commented Jan 12, 2018 at 21:05
  • I found it helpful to go into Windows Settings > Ease Of Access > Color Filters, set it to Inverted and turn on the shortcut key. That way, hitting Windows Key + Ctrl + C will change the colors and it makes the scrollbar thumb a little more visible. I agree it's really something else that they screwed up the scrollbars, both by hiding them all the time and making the scrollbar controls invisible with the colors.
    – Matt Gregory
    Commented Feb 14 at 14:02

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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In Windows 7, it was easily possible to customise appearance of every individual screen item (including colours of scrollbars) as explained here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/accessibility/guides/change_colours/computer/win/win7/index.shtml

In Windows 10, the advanced customization options were removed from the Personalization settings page for some reason.

However, it is still possible to adjust the scrollbar colour in Windows 10, but you have to do the change via Registry:

  1. Open the Registry Editor.

  2. Find the following registry keys:

    Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors

    Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\Colors

  3. There you have to change the Scrollbar value to any colour you like.

    The defaults are: "200 200 200" and "212 208 200", respectively.

    You can substitute them with any colour combination "RRR GGG BBB", where RRR/GGG/BBB are all within range 0-255 and represent the red/green/blue colour components, respectively.

  4. Exit the Registry Editor. You will need to log-off and log-in again for the change to take effect.

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  • Thanks for your answer. I'll check if this indeed works once I'm able to. If it does, I'll set this as the answer. Also, I recently heard that Windows is planning to add more customizability back to the OS theme. I don't know the details, but maybe that could also include scrollbar styling.
    – coolcat007
    Commented May 10, 2019 at 11:37
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    I tried this, but I'm afraid that it doesnt seem to work for me. I also would have expected to be able to specify multiple colors: the scroll bar, the scroll bar slider, the scroll bar slider when hovered and the scroll bar slider when clicked/dragged (and potentially the color of the arrows at the top and bottom)
    – coolcat007
    Commented May 12, 2019 at 23:32
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    What's the difference the two keys? Why are there two?
    – Damn Vegetables
    Commented May 30, 2020 at 11:59
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    I tried the trick for Win 10 but did not work even after restarting my computer.
    – Behrouz.M
    Commented Dec 8, 2021 at 13:46
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Scrollbar color can be changed with High Contrast settings, although it is not primarily intended to be pleasing to the eye, especially if you don't like strong lines and terminal look.

For visually impaired user commenting above, that might be your solution. Regarding Microsoft solving this: give it some time. They've only begun to notice why Apple is always crushing them. The new black theme from October update specifies it doesn't change all of Windows UI. They will continue working on this, especially if people keep pressuring. (Well at least I want to.)

High Contrast mode on Windows 10 looks like this:

What High Contrast mode changes:

  • all parts of Windows GUI including Explorer, scrollbars, start, taskbar, dialog boxes..
  • this includes modern apps and classic apps
  • it also includes Office apps like Word and Excel, which is not very practical for regular user (non visually impaired)

To find High Contrast settings (which as a very old Windows feature can be accessed in many ways, including registry editing, including getting more color options) in the easiest way as of time of writing:

  • Start > search for High contrast settings
  • alternatively go to modern Settings > Ease of Access > on the sidebar High contrast
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