To reset the restore default colors, you can clear recent colors history in Windows 10. Here’re the exact steps to follow.
You can configure Windows 10 to set the accent color based on your wallpaper. When you don’t want Windows to change the accent color every time you change the wallpaper, you can manually set an accent color with just a few clicks.
All you have to do is open the Settings app and go to “Personalization → Colors” and select the accent color of your choice from the Windows Colors section appearing in the right panel.
If you frequently change the accent color then there will be times when might you want to use the accent color you used previously. The good thing is, Windows 10 got your back. Every time you change the accent color, the previous accent color is stored under the “Recent Colors” section which appears right above the “Windows Colors” section. The recent colors section can hold up to five color choices.
As good as it is, for whatever reason, if you want to clear recent colors in Windows 10, you can do that with just a few clicks. Let me show you how to clear recent colors history in Windows 10.
Registry Key to Clear Recent Colors History
To clear recent color history, we need to delete a registry key. Before doing that, backup registry. It just takes a few seconds at most. The registry backup will help restore your system in case of an emergency.
1. First, open the registry editor. You can do that by searching for “regedit” in the start menu.
2. After opening the registry editor, paste the below path in the address bar and press Enter. On the right panel, you can see how Windows keeps track of all the recent colors.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes\History\Colors
2. As I said, we need to delete the Colors folder to clear recent colors history. So, right-click on the “Colors” folder on the left panel and select the “Delete” option.
3. Windows will show a warning prompt. Click the “Yes” button to continue.
That is it. As you can see from the below image, we have successfully cleared recent colors in windows 10. After clearing the recent colors, Windows will replace them with the default colors.
If you change the accent color again, the previous color will be automatically added to the recent colors section.
Download Reg File (Single Click Solution)
If you don’t want to manually edit the registry to clear recent colors history, you can download and execute a simple .reg file.
To start off, download this reg file and extract the zip file to your desktop. Next, open the extracted folder and double-click on the .reg file. If you see a couple of confirmation windows, click “Yes” or “Ok” in both message to merge the reg file.
Alternatively, open Notepad, copy and paste below code it in, and click on “File > Save As.” Now, save the file with .reg extension. In my case, I stored it as “clearRecentColors.reg”. After creating the reg file, double-click on it.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 ;Created by: WindowsLoop.com ;Instructions on: https://windowsloop.com/clear-recent-colors-history-Windows-10 [-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Themes\History\Colors]
When prompted, click on the “Yes” button to continue. This action will clear the recent colors without you manually deleting the registry key.
The best thing about this approach is that you can clear recent color whenever you want with ease. No need to manually open the registry and delete the key.
A quick tip: if you are curious, you can open the downloaded reg file with Notepad or any other text editor to see what’s in it. The file contains the same registry code that I shared above.
I hope that helps.If you are stuck or need some help, comment below and I will try to help as much as possible. If you like this article, you will also like the quick tip on how to enable ultimate performace mode in Windows 10.
