How To Change The Background Color In Windows Photo Viewer Source

Browsers, whether they’re meant for the web, files, or images predominantly have a white background. Web browsers generally lack a setting to change the background color but third party image viewers and file browsers will either go with a dark color or give you an option to change it. The Windows Photo Viewer however doesn’t have any such option. If you want to give it a darker background color and /or change it freely, you need to make a small change in the Windows registry. Here’s how.


This should work in all versions of Windows from Windows 7 and up. Open the Registry by typing ‘regedit’ in the Run box, and follow the following steps.

1. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Photo Viewer\Viewer
2. Create a new DWORD value and name it ‘BackgroundColor’ (minus the quote marks)
3. Go to Edit>Modify from the menu at the top and enter the color you want to set for the background by using its HEX value in the format ff000000. Each value must be preceded by ‘ff’. For example, black: ff000000, red: ffff0000, blue: ff3333ff, yellow: ffffff00 etc.



That’s all you need to do. Click ‘Ok’ and open an image in Windows Photo Viewer. The background will now be whatever color you set it to.



We tried this in Windows 10 where the Windows Photo Viewer is hidden by default. Here’s how you can enable it. The trick is helpful for when you’re looking at images with a transparent background. It also helps reduce strain on your eyes when you’re browsing images at night or in a room with low light.