Windows 11 task bar changes color although nothing appears to be running

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My task bar turned from grey to green last night and stayed green for a couple of hours. I’d not noticed this before but discovered that it’s a feature However it didn’t square with the current state of the system. So I closed every application in case there was an important dialog hidden behind everything else (there wasn’t). I launched Task manager to see what was active – nothing showed up. I launched Resource monitor to see what was busy – CPU was minimal, network was minimal, disk was minimal. Process monitor showed nothing happening either. other than basic services. Nothing untoward in the system tray.

I had to reboot to get the nominal task bar back. Is this a recognised task bar bug or should I treat this as an indication that I ought to probe deeper for problems in my system?

Cheers
T

 

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Did you change your desktop background (or use a theme)?

That can affect taskbar color if Settings, Personalization, Colors, Show accent color on Start and taskbar is switched on.

Where did you discover that it’s a feature connected with the system state?

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Show accent color on start and taskbar is disabled (I have Light mode set). But that was the clue I needed, and now I feel really dumb

I can see that this is the taskbar displaying a mostly transparent version of colors derived from the desktop background, and it turned green for the photo I had as the background last night. (My backgrounds are on an hourly cycle.)

I’ve flicked through a number of backgrounds in the last few minutes and most of them show a nearly grey taskbar but a few produce pronounced colors. I’ve also noticed that this effect is only displayed on the primary monitor; while the secondary monitor displays a taskbar if I mouse to the edge of the display, that taskbar is always flat grey.

cheers

1 user thanked author for this post.

b

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I had the same problem start once I finally agreed to the Windows 11 update. I never had light mode on or custom anything; only dark mode and all the settings “as they were supposed to be” for this issue to never happen. Today, about a month after “upgrading” to 11, my taskbar is just turning green at will and on its own at random. Nothing has to be going on. Watching something in my browser? It goes green then back to slate grey at a whim, just as of today. None of these steps seem to help for someone who already had Dark Mode enabled, I’ve read about 10 threads on this issue now and feel so frustrated!

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This is what worked for me:

Go to Windows Settings
– Accessibility
– Transparency effects  (Turn off)

You can simply type “Transparency effects” in the Search on your task bar.

I don’t recall turning this on either so I’m assuming it was a little “gem” of the most resent windows update.

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The Transparency setting can also be found at:
Settings App\Personalization\Colors\Transparency effects

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