Windows 8.1: The Missing Manual

Preserving Your Tweaks for Posterity

The previous pages describe six ways to modify one of Windows’ canned themes. You can change the desktop picture, the window color schemes, the sound scheme, the screen saver, the desktop icons, and the mouse-pointer shapes. The basic concept is simple: You choose one of Microsoft’s canned themes as a starting point and then adjust these six aspects of it as suits your mood.

When that’s all over, though, you return to the Personalization box, where all the modifications you’ve made are represented at the top of the screen—as an icon called Unsaved Theme (Figure 8-10).

Well, you wouldn’t want all that effort to go to waste, would you? So click “Save theme,” type a name for your new, improved theme, and click Save.

From now on, the theme you’ve created (well, OK, modified) shows up in a new row of the Personalization dialog box called My Themes. From now on, you can recall the emotional tenor of your edited look with a single click on that icon.

If you make further changes to that theme (or any other theme), another Unsaved Theme icon appears, once again ready for you to save and name. You can keep going forever, adding to your gallery of experimentation.

You can also delete a less-inspired theme (right-click its icon; from the shortcut menu, choose Delete Theme). On the other hand, when you strike creative gold, you can package up your theme and share it with other computers—your own, or other people’s online. To do that, right-click the theme’s icon; ...