Change the window caption color

Question

0.00/5 (No votes)

See more:

How do I Change the window color in c++? (Windows 10)

I want the caption color to be yellow. I looked everywhere by searching it on google and I still can't find the right solution to it. Is there a way to change the window caption color?

What I have tried:

int windowColor = 0;
HWND window = GetActiveWindow();
LONG exStyle = GetWindowLong(window, GWL_EXSTYLE);
exStyle &= ~(WS_EX_DLGMODALFRAME | WS_EX_CLIENTEDGE | WS_EX_STATICEDGE);
SetWindowLong(window, GWL_EXSTYLE, exStyle);
DwmSetWindowAttribute(window, 21, &windowColor, sizeof(windowColor));
SetWindowPos(window, NULL, 0,0,0,0, SWP_FRAMECHANGED | SWP_NOMOVE | SWP_NOSIZE | SWP_NOZORDER | SWP_NOOWNERZORDER);

Posted 6-Apr-23 3:38am

SomeGuyWhoLovesCoding

Updated 6-Apr-23 23:16pm

v3

Add a Solution

Comments

[no name] 6-Apr-23 10:01am

Maybe you need to switch to a more "modern" language if you want to do UI development.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/develop/title-bar?tabs=winui3

4 solutions

Add a Solution

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

OriginalGriff · Answer 1 · 2023-04-06T03:59:00

Solution 1

It's not a good idea: not only does it do directly against what the user has specified he wants Windows to look like, it's a lot of trouble.
Basically, you can't do it - not without changing the whole non-client area and that gets ... hairy.

Have a look here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44220563/c-sharp-change-title-bar-color-for-windows-10[^]

Posted 6-Apr-23 3:59am

OriginalGriff

Comments

[no name] 6-Apr-23 10:10am

Check the VS title bar: it's blue. My particular app benefits from a "black" title bar, which idea I took from the MS "master" samples.

SomeGuyWhoLovesCoding 6-Apr-23 10:20am

I want the border color to be yellow.
And I want it be be like this in Windows 10: https://imgur.com/IhyKOiH

Richard MacCutchan · Answer 2 · 2023-04-06T04:43:00

Solution 2

Take a look at WM_NCPAINT message (Winuser.h) - Win32 apps | Microsoft Learn[^]. Although this requires considerable work to make it happen.

Posted 6-Apr-23 4:43am

Richard MacCutchan

Rick York · Answer 3 · 2023-04-06T14:21:00

You really should use values from the enumeration instead of literal values. Here are the values : DwmSetWindowAttribute enumeration[^]. If I am reading the list correctly, there is no enumerated value 21. I would guess you want to use attribute DWMWA_CAPTION_COLOR. It appears that Windows 11 is required to do this so you may be out of luck with that route for W10.

The only alternative I can think of was mentioned previously and that is to override WM_NCPAINT. I don't recommend that because it opens a rather large can of worms but I know of no other options. For more info on that you should go to your search engine of choice and look for "wm_ncpaint example". You will find a lot of stuff on that topic.

merano99 · Answer 4 · 2023-04-06T23:16:00

I have copied the existing code into a VS program framework for test.

The call of DwmSetWindowAttribute() with DWMWA_CAPTION_COLOR (and also the undocumented value 21) fails, which can be seen also with return value. According to the documentation, the DWMWA_CAPTION_COLOR flag is supported with DwmSetWindowAttribute() only from Windows 11 Build 22000.

The error code for Windows10 is E_INVALIDARG (One or more arguments are invalid.).

According to the documentation it is required that "client area rendering" is disabled, which it obviously is not by default.

See:
Controlling non - client region rendering
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/dwm/composition-ovw#controlling-non-client-region-rendering

DWMWINDOWATTRIBUTE enumeration
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/dwmapi/ne-dwmapi-dwmwindowattribute

C++

// disable non - client area rendering
hr = DisableNCRendering(hWnd);

// check state of NCRendering
BOOL isNCRenderingEnabled{ FALSE };
hr = DwmGetWindowAttribute(hWnd, DWMWA_NCRENDERING_ENABLED, &isNCRenderingEnabled, sizeof(isNCRenderingEnabled));

// Specify the color of the caption.
COLORREF  mycolor = 0;
hr = DwmSetWindowAttribute(hWnd, DWMWA_CAPTION_COLOR, &mycolor, sizeof(mycolor));

There's an undocumented window attribute allowing dark mode title bars (DWMWA_USE_IMMERSIVE_DARK_MODE). Apparently this flag does not work under Win10 either.

We have also discussed this question many times and there are also CodeProject articles that deal with it. Unfortunately, Microsoft has changed a lot in the meantime, so that these articles either don't work anymore or can't be compiled.

Change the window caption color

4 solutions

Solution 1

Solution 2

Solution 3

Solution 4

Add your solution here

Preview 0