Policy

Prevent changing visual style for windows and buttons

Microsoft Windows

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Prevent changing visual style for windows and buttons
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Policy overview

Key metadata and intent for this policy.

User
Category
Control Panel > Personalization
Supported on
At least Windows Server 2003 operating systems or Windows XP Professional

Supported OS tags: Windows10, Windows10RT, Windows11, Windows7, Windows8, Windows81, WindowsRT, WindowsRT81, WindowsServer2003, WindowsServer2008, WindowsServer2012, WindowsServer2012R2, WindowsServer2016, WindowsVista, WindowsXP

Prevents users or applications from changing the visual style of the windows and buttons displayed on their screens. When enabled on Windows XP, this setting disables the "Windows and buttons" drop-down list on the Appearance tab in Display Properties. When enabled on Windows XP and later systems, this setting prevents users and applications from changing the visual style through the command line. Also, a user may not apply a different visual style when changing themes.

Internal name
CPL_Personalization_DisableVisualStyle
Policy ID
11bfda77437d
Elements
0

Registry values

How enabled and disabled states update the registry.

ScopeRegistry locationTypeEnabled valueDisabled valueCopy
User
Path
Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
Value name
NoVisualStyleChoice
REG_DWORD
HKCU
1
HKCU
0
Registry location
Type REG_DWORD · User
Path
Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System
Value name
NoVisualStyleChoice
Hive
HKCU
Enabled value
1
Disabled value
0

Policy elements

Inputs and configuration options exposed by this policy.

This policy has no additional user input fields.