Tip: Darkmode for legacy Windows apps on Windows 10/11

[KRtekTM]

Once Microsoft dropped the old Theme configurator where you could change the WinAPI objects colors, it became difficult to have truly dark mode in Windows.
I am using the application WinPaletter, its feature Classic Colors, where you can import or define your own WinTheme as before. It's then applied to all apps through the system.

Here is how my Salamander looks with custom wintheme in WinPaletter and DOS Navigator color theme in Salamander.

[melloware]

Nice!!

[KRtekTM]

It's not flawless - for example after relogging into session, you have to re-apply the theme in Classic Colors (so have it exported once you're satisfied with color settings).
Also, not all components can be painted like in Windows 2000 etc., so you have to find compromises (see that all legacy dialogs, management console app (computer management etc.) will all apply this theme, I found that setting something to have white color on dark background in Salamander led to white text on white background in all other system dialogs, not sure which one).

[janrysavy]

I would like to support dark mode directly, see for example foobar2000:

See https://github.com/ysc3839/win32-darkmode
Comment-out line:
// if (major == 10 && minor == 0 && CheckBuildNumber(g_buildNumber))

or https://stackoverflow.com/questions/53501268/win10-dark-theme-how-to-use-in-winapi

[janrysavy]

MS Windows App SDK / Project Reunion - Dark mode for applications discussion: microsoft/WindowsAppSDK#41
Dark Mode APIs: https://gist.github.com/rounk-ctrl/b04e5622e30e0d62956870d5c22b7017

SumatraPDF Reader: sumatrapdfreader/sumatrapdf#4976
Explorer++: derceg/explorerplusplus#115
TortoiseGit: https://github.com/TortoiseGit/TortoiseGit/blob/master/src/Utils/Theme.cpp
TortoiseSVN: https://tortoisesvn.net/downloads.html
darkmodelib: https://github.com/ozone10/darkmodelib

DarkTaskDialog: https://github.com/janrysavy/DarkTaskDialog

[KRtekTM]

salam_darkmode.mp4

main...KRtkovo-eu-AI:salamander:darkmode

[janrysavy]

Wow wow, here we go!

[KRtekTM]

Not all components could be repainted with a simple call, so there are a lot of compromises and some ugly things are still there.

[KRtekTM]

Plugin have the dark menu bar while internal viewer don't. But the rest of the plugin is light...

[janrysavy]

The menu and menubar in the internal viewer are the standard Windows menu and menu bar, whereas the menu in Salamander’s main window is entirely our own code. As for color styling of the standard Windows menu, we can take inspiration from our colleagues:

Explorer++:

https://github.com/copilot/share/02255290-01a0-80a7-9100-200a449d0019 (GPT-5)
https://github.com/copilot/share/c8250310-09a4-8c03-9002-200364dd400b (Claude Sonnet 4.5)

[KRtekTM]

The menu and menubar in the internal viewer are the standard Windows menu and menu bar, whereas the menu in Salamander’s main window is entirely our own code. As for color styling of the standard Windows menu, we can take inspiration from our colleagues:
(...)

The code is already trying to do that as seen on the screenshot however it's probably the same issue as in the Configuration dialog where some of the labels (checkboxes, radiobuttons, groupbox labels etc.) where unable to switch the font color (so I have to introduce the fallback to the legacy winapi components, and this issue still persist on some components). So yeah, in needs a custom brush and some tweaking.

Codex in review also suggested to "let the Windows switch the theme so there is no mismatched components after switching Windows to light theme" - this is intended because so the color scheme could be still customized by the user via configuration dialog etc.
I can imagine the user story when somebody is switching light/dark windows theme according to the day time, so for this scenario we need some additional smart logic.

[janrysavy]

@KRtekTM https://github.com/ozone10/darkmodelib