Make Microsoft Edge your own with themes

[William Devereux]

Browsers are very personal. Much of what we do on a computer happens in a web browser, and like anything you use frequently it’s important to be able to make it your own. We’ve heard your requests to make Edge more personal with themes, and today we’re excited to announce that we’ve added over two dozen themes to the Microsoft Edge Add-ons site.

Themes change the look and feel of your browser to create a beautiful and immersive visual experience. They can also be helpful for distinguishing your different profiles to help you separate home, school or work accounts. When you apply a theme, you’ll notice a new background on your new tab page. Your tabs, address bar, and other parts of the browser will also take on the look of the theme for a more immersive experience. We’ve even added support for vertical tabs, a new feature you Insiders have been helping us test.

You’ll find a wide variety of launch themes in the Add-ons site to help you show off your current mood or interest. We’ve also partnered with Xbox to offer themes from your favorite franchises, including Halo, Gears, Forza, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Sea of Thieves, Grounded, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, and more. All of these themes are available exclusively in Microsoft Edge. And if you don’t find one you want, you can also install themes from other stores, including the Chrome Web Store.

Of course, this is just the beginning. We’ll continue growing our collection of themes, and in the coming months we’ll be adding support for anyone to submit their own themes. Soon, you’ll even be able to select a theme color directly from the Edge Settings as well.

Themes make Microsoft Edge more personal and fun, and we’re so excited to hear what you think. Let us know which theme is your favorite in the comments! And keep an eye on the Microsoft Edge Add-ons site for more themes in the future.

— William Devereux, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Edge

[#2]

This is something I consider very important. You talk of "personalizing" Edge with themes, but when the rubber actually hits the road, it's not really personalization, it's just using a design that someone else somewhere thought was a good idea. Not even a little bit personal, because I didn't design it, someone else did.

What you need to do is talk to the team that develop Microsoft Visual Studio, and take a look at the customization of that program. They got it right, you can modify every imaginable aspect of the UI, and they even developed an addon that allows the creation of fully customized themes.

One area that really needs user selection is in title bar colorization. Since I run with a deep blue title bar, the black text that Edge insists on using is completely unreadable. I need some way to set it to white, or better yet, use the solution that Samsung use on their smartphones for the status line at the top. They actually analyze the current background image, and automatically switch between white and black text to ensure the best possible contrast.

This problem, and the solution to it, were codified over four hundred years ago, simply read "The rule of Tincture" on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_tincture for details. Yet modern designers seem to miss this outstandingly simple rule with absolutely amazing regularity. Samsung understand this. Microsoft apparently don't.

[#3]

@HotCakeX @William Devereux Chrome has the option for users to precisely customize theme colours. Edge must incorporate that. Currently available options (theme colours) in Edge setting (Appearance) are inadequate and unappealing.