Windows 10 Dark Themes !

This is a personal problem I have with Windows 10 and Microsoft...I hate excessive brightness on my triple monitor setup. It lights me up like a sunny day, and at midnight, it's not something I utterly like.

Before Windows 10/8, I mean, in the Windows 7 era and before that, Windows themes, desktop customization and colorization were part of the core system.

But, come Windows 10 (I skipped all 8 flavors), it went way. We had to cope with the IDIOTS at Microsoft that decided to skip most the themes implementation, and all the colorizations and gradient color bars with it.

So, we ended up with a mongamic/monochromatic OS, where the background HAS TO BE white (or black, if you enable a silly Dark Side toggle button somewhere in the also oversimplified, overidiotic setup).

Now, I had to get rid of pure white RGB(255,255,255) backgrounds, but I also didn't want a pure black RGB(0,0,0) background.

What to do ? A few hackers/integrators decided to create a "Black Theme Toolkit" (google it) or the UltraXThemePatcher, tools designed to patch the Windows GUI system DLLS (a bunch of UX***.DLL). But this poses problems, of course, of maintenance, integrity, spywarity, etcity.

I didn't want to go down that road.

But I wanted:

- File Explorer with NON-WHITE background.

- Programs like OpenOfffice Calc with NON-WHITE background.

- Programs like  like Thunderbird mail list with NON-WHITE background.

- Google Chrome with NON-WHITE background.

- Windows Apps and Settings and all that crap with NON-WHITE background

But there was not a "unified" solution.

So I had to address each problem separately, and needless to say, I did a GOOD JOB. So, I hope it helps you.

• For File Explorer to become grey (in my case. Choose any background/color you like):
  This one takes a bit, but works fine. You install QTTabBar (qttabbar.wikidot.com/). After you install it you'll see a new bar. Click the Dental donut(Options). Go to:
• Appearance==>Folder View
• Appearance==>Navigation Pane
• Compatible Folder View
•  and chose your background color for all three. Apply and rejoice. After that you go to the Explorer View, click Options and disable the QTCommandBar check menu item, do hide the bar.
  
• For Windows programs like Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Core Temp or whatever window .EXE you use, to show non-White background, you have to be creative. So:
• go to Settings==>Personalization==>Themes, grab your favorite theme (still white) and menu==>"Save theme for sharing". That will save a deskthemepack file somewhere. Then you have to open it (it's a ZIP/RAR file) so rename it and extract the .themes file that's inside.
  Now we have the "real theme" we want to update, so you can change its "DisplayName" from Blabla to Blabla-GREY for example, and then you do magic:
• Add an entry: [Control Panel\Colors]
  Below, add: Window=200 200 200
  That's RGB (200,200,200) so you can try any color you want.
• Next click on the theme file and it will be imported into your themes database and will show up in the Themes window, so you can click on it and voilà, your application background have changed !
• Yes, there are a LOT of Control Panel\Colors customizations beyond the Window=, but that's another topic.
  
• For Google Chrome background, you've got an easy solution. Of course you can install picture extensions that completely change your Chrome search box window background, but that's not really what we want. We want an extension named "Dark Reader". Install it and rejoice. Well actually, configure it, set it to "On", set it to "Light" (Dark will be black) and adjust Brightness from "Off" to "-10%". Voilà you're now greyed out on all your favorite blogs, newspapers, and all the crap you navigate to.
  
• Finally, for Windows 10 Apps and settings, unfortunately, I didn't figure it out, except turning it to black background.
  Go to Settings==>Personalization==>Color, scroll to the bottom of the page, and there you will find "Choose your default app mode" and choose "Dark". Of course, that means hardcoded black but it's better than full white, for me, at least.

And there you have it, WITHOUT being intrusive in changing OS binary DLL's, you can customize the colors your OS presents to you, and give  your eyes a BIG CHUNK of eye strain relief.

There are a few things I will keep on investigating, and will surely find and answer, like "Inactive bar colors".