Forum Discussion
Windows 11 Title Bar Inconsistencies
In title bars I noticed a number of inconsistencies. I use dark mode. The setting in Personalization > Colors have both "Show accent color on Start and taskbar" and "Show accent color on title bars and windows borders". Most apps show my selected color in title bars. When I open File Explorer, Settings, Microsoft Store, Notepad, Office, and probably other MS related apps, only the border of the window may show my selected color. A handful of third party apps show the same thing. I know that a few updates ago, MS swapped the positions of the tool bar and address bar and added tabs for File Explorer. I don't know if that messed anything up. Are there different types of title bars?
3 Replies
Nothing is broken on your system. This is just how Windows 11 handles title bars now.
Short version: there’s more than one kind of title bar in Windows 11.
Older desktop apps still use the classic Windows title bar, and those usually respect your accent color fully. Newer Microsoft apps (File Explorer, Settings, Store, new Notepad, Office) don’t. They draw their own custom title bars, especially after Microsoft added things like tabs and the new command bar.
Because of that, these apps only apply the accent color to the window border, not the whole title bar — which is why it looks inconsistent, especially in dark mode.
So yes, the File Explorer changes you mentioned are related, but nothing is “messed up.” It’s an intentional design choice, not a bug, and there’s currently no setting to force all apps to behave the same way.
Some third-party apps do the same thing for similar reasons.
Windows uses "title bars" as the top strip of a window, which can display the window title, control buttons (minimize, maximize, close), and sometimes tabs (like in File Explorer or browsers).
Your observation about different apps shows that Windows’ theming engine isn't uniformly applying accent colors across all app types and UI elements. This is a common situation, especially with the mix of legacy and modern UI elements, and recent Windows updates.
