nitschis
Problem with powertoys background ?
Hi,
I love this theme, been using it for 2 years.
For everything I use day to day, it's perfect.
However I noticed that Powertoy's dashboard is being a little annoying !
Here is what it looks like
There seems to be an issue with how Powertoy's theme works
I tried the dark theme
The light theme
And the default
But it doesn't change anything unfortunately.
There are a few other minor application like this that I rarely have to interact with.
For example LGTV companion
OpenHardwareMonitor
has these lines that a just a little too bright
Firefox settings is also a little too bright
In sketchup, the measurements textbox is hard to read
Of course there is the taskbar which has these lines, I'm used to them, but when I show it to new user they recoil a bit
The QTTabBar settings page (originally, the explorer qt tabs were white, but the application gives the option of changing them)
HWinfo64 is kind of hard to read, I tried all 3 themes, grey, dark, light, same thing
That is all that I could find.
I would say on a day-to-day basis, the sketchup "measurement" textbox is the most difficult the rest I can just squint a little, the little amount of time that I need it !
Hello, I am sorry to say that I have not used Windows for many years now.
All the issues you are seeing are symptoms of the limited theming features of Windows (one of many reasons I switched to Linux). The white annoying boxes around your status items, use the same variable that is used for "text color" (yes, idiotic).
So you only have the option to make the text dark to remove the borders, which is not an option for readability.
I have had a quick peek at the Microsoft documentation, and it looks like things have not improved: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/controls/themesfileformat-overview
Maybe there is a way to theme the new (windows) dark theme? I really don't know and am sorry to tell you that I do not have the time or motivation to look into this. I always lived with the limitations, as it was the best option for me at the time.
ChatGPT seems to agree:
However, specific to the theming and visual customization, the core mechanisms and limitations around the high-contrast themes and system tray icon borders you've mentioned remained relatively unchanged.
The issue you're facing is rooted in how Windows 10's theme system is designed. High-contrast themes are primarily intended to aid visibility and accessibility, but they do have limitations in terms of fine-grained customization. When a single system variable controls multiple UI elements (like text color affecting both text readability and icon borders in the system tray), it can lead to the kind of problem you're experiencing—where adjusting one aspect to your liking adversely affects another.
Sorry, I can't help you with this. Good choice of screen btw, I also use 2x C2 OLEDs as my monitors.
The C2 are awesome, I wish all my screens were that type !
I think the systray still uses win32 API, not sure.
I am considering hex editing explorer.exe to change the color assignement.
But before trying something this extreme. I found this application that might be able to force colours on win32 apps, probably in a way similar to the high contrast theme.
https://github.com/Abdelrhman-AK/WinPaletter
If I have any more progress, I'll post here again.