How do I programmatically obtain the user’s selected accent color in Windows 10?

Raymond Chen

If you want to obtain the user’s accent color, you can ask the UISettings object for the current color value of UIColorType.Accent.

How you get this information depends on what kind of program you’re writing.

If you’re writing a Store app or a classic desktop program in C++/CX, then you do this:

namespace vm = Windows::UI::ViewManagement;

void GetAccentColor()
{
    auto settings = ref new vm::UISettings();
    auto color = settings->GetColorValue(vm::UIColorType::Accent);
    // color.A, color.R, color.G, and color.B are the color channels.
}

If you’re writing a Store app or a classic desktop program in C#, then you do this:

using vm = Windows.UI.ViewManagement;

void GetAccentColor()
{
    var settings = new vm.UISettings();
    var color = settings.GetColorValue(vm.UIColorType.Accent);
    // color.A, color.R, color.G, and color.B are the color channels.
}

If you’re writing a Store app in JavaScript, then you do this:

var vm = Windows.UI.ViewManagement;

function getAccentColor() {
    var settings = new vm.UISettings();
    var color = settings.getColorValue(vm.UIColorType.accent);
    // color.a, color.r, color.g, and color.b are the color channels.
}

If you’re writing a Store app or a classic desktop program in raw C++ (you crazy person you), then you get to do this:

namespace abi_vm = ABI::Windows::UI::ViewManagement;
namespace wrl = Microsoft::WRL;
namespace wf = Windows::Foundation;

void GetAccentColor()
{
    // Error checking has been elided for expository purposes.
    wrl::ComPtr<abi_vm::IUISettings> settings;
    wf::ActivateInstance(wrl::Wrappers::HStringReference(
     RuntimeClass_Windows_UI_ViewManagement_UISettings).Get(), &settings);
    ABI::Windows::UI::Color color;
    settings->GetColorValue(abi_vm::UIColorType::Accent, &color);
    // color.A, color.R, color.G, and color.B are the color channels.
}

And if you’re writing a Store app or a classic desktop program in C++/WinRT, you write this:

namespace winrt_vm = winrt::Windows::UI::ViewManagement;

void GetAccentColor()
{
    winrt_vm::UISettings settings;
    auto color = settings.GetColorValue(winrt_vm::UIColorType::Accent);
    // color.A, color.R, color.G, and color.B are the color channels.
}

Note that I used namespace aliases instead of importing the entire namespace. This makes the code a little bit uglier, but I think it’s useful for expository purposes because it makes it clearer which namespace each identifier comes from.

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