Windows App of the Week: Windows 7 Color Changer

Posted 04/20/2011 at 1:42pm | by David Murphy

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Some freeware apps were made to solve small problems; some were made to solve huge problems. If you’re as picky as me, then you’ll slap the freeware application Windows 7 Color Changer in the latter category without a second thought.

Allow me to set up the picture—pardon the pun. Within Windows 7 is a handy little feature that allows you to set rotating wallpaper backgrounds with great ease. Merely fire up the Personalization window from your Control Panel, click on the “Desktop Background” option toward the bottom of the window, and then select any number of shots that you want Windows to automatically rotate through on a time interval that you can specify. That’s it. Easy, right?

Here’s the problem: Windows might rotate your desktop wallpaper, but there’s no way the operating system is going to change your window color to match—otherwise known as the Aero glass effect that that’s a staple element of the Windows 7 UI. And for the artist, why would you go to all this trouble to concoct up a beautiful, random piece of wallpaper that completely clashes with your unchanging window color?

The solution is, of course, a freeware app—Windows 7 Color Changer, which handles all the wallpaper and color changing on its own, sans the help of your OS. Input your desired pictures, select colors (and transparency levels) to match, then sit back and watch the app work its randomized or changing-on-a-set-pattern magic. Heck, the app will even autostart with your Windows boot if you let it. We love this turbo-charged version of a common Windows theme, and we only wish Microsoft would borrow a page and allow specific Window Color matching within, say, Windows 8?

Download it here!

Have an awesome suggestion for a freeware or open-source application that you'd like to see profiled? Leave a note in the comments or contact David Murphy directly!