Making the Icons Match the Wallpaper

A middle ground for the icon battles

Monday, June 2, 2025 by bdsams | Discussion: WinCustomize News

For the past few weeks, I have been writing about the various tribulations of icons on the desktop. Sure, they are functional, but they also hide wallpaper which for many, like me, isn’t a good thing.

And then there is the “issue”, if you want to call it that, where the icons simply do not match the style of the desktop. Yes, you could go through and apply new icons to each file type to make it blend in a bit better, but there is also another option to make everything look like it was designed for the wallpaper without having to do hours of image editing or trying to find the right icon pack.

With Fences 6 hitting 1.0 last week, I wanted to point out one item that is related to icon tint that we implemented.

Prior to Fences 6 being released, matching desktop content to your wallpaper was a game of sliders in the Fences configuration panel. Yes, all the controls were there but it was a bit of a guessing game to try and get the look you desired – we wanted to change this.

New in Fences 6 is an eye dropper tool that lets you pick colors from your wallpaper to make everything match what is already on your display. No fuddling around with sliders - point, click, and a pixel perfect color match.

When we built this capability, it was an “a-ha” moment for something we wanted to do for a long time but didn’t quite know how we wanted to get there. Once you see it, it makes a lot of sense but working through all the changes needed to make it possible was the best part of working on Fences 6.

With icons matching the desktop wallpaper, it provides a third option of icons, no icons, or matching icons which is likely where I am going to stay for a little bit. And by little bit, I mean until I get the next itch to change things up again as customizing Windows 11 is always a work in progress…at least for me.

teddybearcholla
Reply #1 Monday, June 2, 2025 11:48 AM

An eye drop tool! Awesome!!!    

pelaird
Reply #2 Monday, June 2, 2025 12:16 PM

This color picker needs to be added to Start11.

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