A Windows theme is a group of settings, colors, sounds, and similar configurable options that define how the interface appears to the user. A theme is used to personalize the computing environment to make it easy to use.
Theme File Format – Win32 apps | Microsoft Learn
Important – You need an activated Windows Enterprise or higher for changing the lockscreen background over policy.
This tool can help you simplify the whole deployment via GPO or for example with Microsoft Intune:
tugich/MyCorporateTheme: This tool helps you to set up the corporate theme on the user desktop. (github.com)
1. Create the Windows Theme (*.theme) file – The simple & fast way
First, create your personal theme via Windows Settings – Define your desired settings such as accent color, background image, etc.
💾 After the creation you only have to click on [Save] to save it locally. Only then you will find the file locally in your user profile.
✔️ The saved themes can be found under the following user path:
%localappdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Themes
2. Update the path in the *.theme file – with Notepad
The theme file can be edited with any text editor. The path to the background image can be defined in the “Control Panel\Desktop” section:
[Control Panel\Desktop] Wallpaper=%ProgramFiles%\TUGI\Windows Theme\Background.jpg Pattern= MultimonBackgrounds=0 PicturePosition=4 WallpaperWriteTime=132371486700019377
3. Prepare your files for the installer – TUGI.theme, Background.jpg and Lockscreen.jpg
Now create a folder with your *.theme file and the two images you want (one for the background and the other for the lockscreen):
4. Create your own installer with Advanced Installer
To create an easily importable project for any client endpoint management system like SCCM for example, we use the software Advanced Installer which allows us to create a single MSI from multiple files. Here you can download the sample project:
✅ Project type:
Simple 😎
✅ Name: Windows Theme
✅ Version: 1.0.0
✅ Publisher: TUGI
✔️ With this information the following path is automatically created by Advanced Installer – please note that this path must be correctly defined in your Theme file:
C:\Program Files\TUGI\Windows Theme\
✅ Package type:
64-bit package for x64 processor (…)
✅ Files and Folders:
Drag and drop your background and lockscreen image in the Application Folder and your Windows Theme file in the Windows Volume\Windows\Resources\Themes:
5. Import the MSI
✅ Build the MSI with Advanced Installer and import in your endpoint manager
✅ Assign the app as required for all devices (not users!)
6. Create configuration profile in Microsoft Intune or Microsoft Endpoint Manager
Unfortunately, this setting is not supported via Intune. In the combination of SCCM and GPO Policy no problems should arise.
Note – A solution for Intune will follow later in this post.
Configuration for Microsoft Intune (Cloud)
✅ Create new configuration profile (Settings Catalog) and define following settings – The background image will only apply if the user is login first time:
Configuration over GPO for Microsoft Endpoint Manager (ex. SCCM)
With the first login of the user the theme is forced with this GPO setting. However, this does not apply to existing logged-in users.
