The trick we used in the first article was to add a swipe of color to the bottom of your wallpaper, which then shows through the Aero transparency and makes your taskbar change color without having to change the entire theme. It was simple and fun.
Reader Grant Prudlow took the initiative to make the whole process even easier, and created an application that can automate the whole process—it’s an impressive little application that works perfectly.
Using Windows 7 Taskbar Color Changer
There’s really not very much to using the application—simply download it, extract it into a folder somewhere, and then launch it. You can choose a color or use the Random button, and then click the Apply button to change the taskbar color.
The color picker is a standard one, and you can choose any color you want.
Here’s a green taskbar!
Just in case you are worried, the application makes a copy of your wallpaper and puts it into a separate folder. The original wallpaper image is untouched and you can switch back to it anytime.
Reverting Your Taskbar Back to Normal
You can quickly revert your taskbar back to normal by just selecting the original wallpaper and setting it as your desktop background again. Which you could also do in Control Panel, or wherever you prefer to set it.
Want the wallpaper image I’m using in the screenshot? It’s part of our Starscape wallpaper collection.
Rotating Between Taskbar Colors
What Grant might not have anticipated is that since the application stores a copy of each color that you try out, you can open up the Desktop Background panel in Control Panel and select most or all of the different wallpaper copies—each with a separate color that you previously chose.
Then Windows 7 will automatically let you shuffle between all of the wallpaper images on a regular basis, which will actually end up just changing the taskbar color, since it’s the same wallpaper.
It’s a rather interesting feature.
Watch a Video of it in Action
If you’re the type that would rather see it working before you try it out, here’s a short video showing off just how quickly it actually works. There’s no sound, so you don’t need to bother adjusting your speakers.
Download Windows 7 Taskbar Color Changer
You can grab your own copy of the application from Grant’s web page, or we’ve also provided a mirror copy just in case his web server can’t handle the load, but you can check out his other utilities as well on his site.
Note: If you really like the software, you could consider donating a few dollars to Grant via the Paypal links on his Home Page
Download Windows 7 Taskbar Color Changer from grantman.net
