In this post, I will explain how to enable Education themes using Intune for Windows users. Using the Settings catalog, you can activate EDU-specific theme packs for Windows 11 users from Intune admin center.
Education Themes refer to specialized desktop themes designed specifically for educational environments. These themes are tailored to enhance focus, creativity, and productivity for students, educators, and institutions using Windows 11 devices in schools or learning settings.
The education themes aren’t turned on by default, but they can be turned on using either Group Policy or Intune if needed. There are manual methods to turn on the Edu themes on Windows 11. Microsoft advises using the Windows Configuration Designer (WCD) to create a provisioning package as an alternative method for activating Edu themes.
Enable Education Themes using Intune Policy
The following instructions describe how to enable education themes for your Windows devices using Microsoft Intune.
Sign in to Intune admin center. Go to Devices > Windows > Configuration > Create > New Policy. Choose Settings catalog profile for Windows 10 devices and later.
On the Basics tab, provide a Name and Description of the policy and click Next. On Configuration settings tab, click on + Add settings and use the Settings picker to search using ‘Edu Themes‘ and select Education category. Check the policy Enable Edu Themes.
The Enable Edu themes policy setting allows you to control whether EDU-specific theme packs are available in Settings > Personalization.
- If you enable this policy setting, users will be able to personalize their devices with EDU-specific themes.
- If you disable or don’t configure this policy setting, EDU-specific theme packs will not be included.
To enable the Edu Themes policy setting, switch the slider to “Enabled“. Click Next.
Assign the policy to a group that contains as members the devices or users that you want to configure. Click Next.
Review enable Edu themes policy settings once and click Create.
After you create a configuration policy in Intune, a notification appears: “Policy created successfully.” This confirms that the policy has been created and is being applied to the groups we chose.
The profile we created can be found in the configuration profiles section of the Intune admin center.
Perform Policy Sync on devices
After assigning the Edu themes policy to device or user groups, you need to wait for it to take effect. The profile settings will be applied once the devices check in with the Intune service.
You can also speed up the policy assignments by manually syncing Intune policies on your computers.
Monitor Enable Edu Themes policy status
To monitor enable EDU themes policy assignments in Intune admin center, go to Devices > Windows > Configuration and here select the Device Configuration Profile that you want to monitor. On the Policy overview page, check the device and user check-in status.
From the screenshot below, we see that policy assignments are successful on the devices and there are no errors observed. In some cases, the policy may fail to apply to certain devices.
To resolve these issues, you will need to troubleshoot the issue by reviewing Intune logs on Windows computers. These are essential IME logs that are useful for troubleshooting app deployment failures on remote computers.
End User Experience: Edu Themes
To check if the EDU-specific theme packs are available, sign in to Windows 11 device. Go to Settings > Personalization, and here you find the education themes enabled via Intune policy. Students or users can apply the education themes from Settings > Personalization > Themes.
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