Some of the new features included in Windows 7 are advancements in touch, speech and handwriting recognition, support for virtual hard disks, support for additional file formats, improved performance on multi-core processors, improved boot performance, and kernel improvements.

Windows 7 retains the Windows Aero graphical user interface and visual style introduced in its predecessor, Windows Vista, but many areas have seen enhancements. Unlike Windows Vista, window borders and the taskbar do not turn opaque when a window is maximized while Windows Aero is active; instead, they remain translucent.

Support for themes has been extended in Windows 7. In addition to providing options to customize colors of window chrome and other aspects of the interface including the desktop background, icons, mouse cursors, and sound schemes, the operating system also includes a native desktop slideshow feature. A new theme pack extension has been introduced, .themepack, which is essentially a collection of cabinet files that consist of theme resources including background images, color preferences, desktop icons, mouse cursors, and sound schemes. The new theme extension simplifies sharing of themes and can also display desktop wallpapers via RSS feeds provided by the Windows RSS Platform. Microsoft provides additional themes for free through its website.

The default theme in Windows 7 consists of a single desktop wallpaper named "Harmony" and the default desktop icons, mouse cursors, and sound scheme introduced in Windows Vista; however, none of the desktop backgrounds included with Windows Vista are present in Windows 7. New themes include Architecture, Characters, Landscapes, Nature, and Scenes, and an additional country-specific theme that is determined based on the defined locale when the operating system is installed; although only the theme for a user's home country is displayed within the user interface, the files for all of these other country-specific themes are included in the operating system. All themes included in Windows 7—excluding the default theme—include six wallpaper images. A number of new sound schemes (each associated with an included theme) have also been introduced: Afternoon, Calligraphy, Characters, Cityscape, Delta, Festival, Garden, Heritage, Landscape, Quirky, Raga, Savana, and Sonata. Themes may introduce their own custom sounds, which can be used with others themes as well.

Windows 7 introduces a desktop slideshow feature that periodically changes the desktop wallpaper based on a user-defined interval; the change is accompanied by a smooth fade transition with a duration that can be customized via the Windows Registry. The desktop slideshow feature supports local images and images obtained via RSS.

With Windows Vista, Microsoft introduced the Windows Sidebar to host Microsoft Gadgets that displayed details such as feeds and sports scores; the gadgets could optionally be placed on the Windows desktop. With Windows 7, gadgets can still be placed on the Windows desktop, but the Windows Sidebar itself has been removed, and the platform has been renamed as Windows Desktop Gadgets. Gadgets are more closely integrated with Windows Explorer, but the gadgets themselves continue to operate in a single sidebar.exe process (unlike in Windows Vista where gadgets could operate in multiple sidebar.exe processes). New features for gadgets include:

Windows 7 also introduces a single new gadget, one for Windows Media Center that displays links to the various sections (e.g., Pictures + Videos) of its interface.

For original equipment manufacturers and enterprises, Windows 7 natively supports the ability to customize the wallpaper that is displayed during user login. Because the settings to change the wallpaper are available via the Windows Registry, users can also customize this wallpaper. Options to customize the appearance of interface lighting and shadows are also available.