Windows 11 - Custom theme with MEM

If your company has a strong branding profile, you might be interested in assigning a custom desktop theme pack to your Windows 11 computers reflecting your brand. I have put together a simple routine for distributing a deskthemepack with Microsoft Endpoint Manager.

Design your preferred theme

Use the Settings app on a Windows 11 computer to design your preferred desktop theme. After setting a preferred background, sounds, colors and mouse cursors, you can save this as a named theme.

You now have this as a theme on your computer which can be exported for sharing. Save this as a file on your computer.

Apply theme with Microsoft Endpoint Manager

Next step is to apply this theme on the Windows 11 fleet. This will be done by a PowerShell script which downloads the deskthemepack file from an Azure blob storage and applies it on the device.

First we will upload the file to an Azure Blob storage where it will be available for download. There are several ways in which you can configure your storage for easy access - these will not be covered at this point.

I have prepared a PowerShell script which is available at my GitHub. The script will download and apply the theme.

<#

  .NOTES

  ===========================================================================

   Created on:    24.06.2022

   Created by:    Simon Skotheimsvik

   Filename:      Win11-SetDesktopTheme.ps1

   Info:          https://skotheimsvik.blogspot.com/

  ===========================================================================

 

  .DESCRIPTION

    This script downloads the themepack from Azure Blob Storage and activates the themepack for Windows11.

    The script can be assigned to devices in Microsoft Endpoint Manager.

   

  .EXAMPLE

    Win11-SetDesktopTheme.ps1

#>

# Parameters for source and destination for the themepack file

$ThemepackSource = "https://XXXXXXXX.blob.core.windows.net/YYYYYYYYYYYYY/Win11-theme.deskthemepack"

$ThemepackDestinationFolder = "C:\temp\"

$WallpaperDestinationFile = "$ThemepackDestinationFolder\win11-corporate-theme.deskthemepack"

# Creates the destination folder on the target computer

md $ThemepackDestinationFolder -erroraction silentlycontinue

# Downloads the image file from the source location

Start-BitsTransfer -Source $ThemepackSource -Destination "$WallpaperDestinationFile"

# Assign the themepack

start-process -FilePath $WallpaperDestinationFile; timeout /t 3; taskkill /im "systemsettings.exe" /f

The script can be distributed by Microsoft Endpont Manager.

Upon the next sync from Endpoint Manager, the theme should be applied to the targeted Windows 11 devices.

If you want to set accent color on start, taskbar, title bars and windows borders in the same run, you can easily implement the solution from The Lazy Administrator on this subject at the end of my script. If you want to get beautiful lockscreen images as wallpaper using Intune, you can use this script from @michael_mardahl.

No extra charge for the mistakes - solution shared as it is - use it at your own risk.

Thanks for reading - please share and comment