RE: Dark mode on Windows

[Vince Salvino <salvino@coderedcorp.com>]

All right everyone, thanks for all your help. I managed to work out the library loading issue, and now have it querying the preferred theme from the registry. I will submit shortly following the CONTRIBUTE guide.

Info and download: https://github.com/vsalvino/emacs

Patch: https://github.com/vsalvino/emacs/pull/1/files

It currently works as so:
* Queries if emacs is running on a supported version of Windows, and OS theme is set to "dark" (light is default).
* Applies system dark title bar
* Applies system dark scroll bars

The following is needed to "complete" the dark mode, but requires a lot more rabbit holes, so will have to be saved for a later date:
* Dark menu bar (no idea how to do this)
* Dark tool bar (probably same implementation as menu bar)

Feel free to debate among yourselves as to the meaning of life:
* Automatically switching the faces/theme to a light/dark theme. This would be cool but also kind of useless as most people configure their own theme anyhow. And nearly every other editor DOES NOT do this, so I think trying to automatically switch user settings is pointless. Maybe add a link on the splash screen to set your theme.
* Make sure themes support dark tab bars. Most do not style it (since it is a newer feature) so it still appears light even on a dark theme.
* I do not want to implement a watcher that receives system light/dark mode changes to dynamically update the window theme. Just restart emacs, it's not a big deal.


Vince Salvino

-----Original Message-----
From: Vince Salvino 
Sent: Sunday, October 24, 2021 6:27 PM
To: emacs-devel@gnu.org
Subject: Dark mode on Windows

Windows 10 has a system-wide "dark mode", which if supported by an app, can tell the app to use dark title bars, scrollbars, etc.

In a fit of rage after staring at the blinding white titlebar on my Emacs frame, I researched the issue and implemented "dark mode" in Emacs for Windows (the rage had been building for years).

Here is a work in progress, which seemingly works quite well, but needs a bit more work. Would anyone be able to help, or possibly help get such a feature merged in?

See README.md in my fork: https://github.com/vsalvino/emacs 


Vince Salvino