DarkNet

Enable native Windows dark mode for your WPF and Windows Forms title bars.

• Requirements
• Installation
• Usage
  • Basics
  • WPF
  • Windows Forms
  • Taskbar theme
• Demos
• Limitations
• Acknowledgements

Requirements

• .NET runtime
  • .NET 5.0 or later
  • .NET Core 3.1 or later
  • .NET Framework 4.5.2 or later
• Windows
  • Windows 10 version 1809 (October 2018 Update) or later
  • Windows 11 or later
  • You can still run your program on earlier Windows versions as well, but the title bar won't turn dark.
• Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Forms, or access to the native window handle of other windows in your process

Installation

DarkNet is available in NuGet Gallery.

dotnet add package DarkNet

Install-Package DarkNet

Usage

Basics

Entry point

The top-level interface of this library is Dark.Net.IDarkNet, which is implemented by the DarkNet class. A shared instance of this class is available from DarkNet.Instance, or you can construct a new instance with new DarkNet().

Methods

1. First, you may optionally call SetCurrentProcessTheme(Theme) to define a default theme for your windows, although it doesn't actually apply the theme to any windows on its own.

   If you don't call this method, any window on which you call SetWindowTheme*(myWindow, Theme.Auto) will inherit its theme from the operating system's default app theme, skipping this app-level default.

2. Next, you must call one of the SetWindowTheme*(Window, Theme) methods to actually apply a theme to each window. There are 3 methods to handle WPF, Forms, and raw HWND handles.

   If you don't call one of these methods on a given window, that window will always use the light theme, even if you called SetCurrentProcessTheme and set the OS default app mode to dark.

Themes

This library uses the Theme enum to differentiate Dark mode from Light mode. You can set any window in your application to use whichever theme you want, they don't all have to be the same theme. There is also an Auto value that allows the theme to be inherited from a higher level, falling back from the window to the process to the user account:

1. When a window's theme is Dark or Light, it uses that theme directly (SetWindowTheme*).
2. When a window's theme is Auto, it inherits from the process's theme set by SetCurrentProcessTheme.
3. When a window and its process's themes are both Auto, they inherit from the local user's operating system default app theme preferences (Settings › Personalization › Colors › Choose your default app mode).

Live updates

If the user changes their default app mode while your app is running with the Auto theme, then your app will automatically update and render the new theme without having to handle any events or restart.

Try the demo apps to see this behavior in action.

WPF

On application startup

Before showing any windows in your application, you may optionally call

IDarkNet.SetCurrentProcessTheme(theme);

A good place to call this is in an event handler for your Application's Startup event, or in its overridden OnStartup method.

By default, WPF apps have an App.xaml.cs class that inherits from Application. You can override OnStartup to initialize DarkNet:

// App.xaml.cs
using Dark.Net;

public partial class App: Application {

    protected override void OnStartup(StartupEventArgs e) {
        base.OnStartup(e);
        DarkNet.Instance.SetCurrentProcessTheme(Theme.Auto);
    }
}

Before showing a new window

Before showing each window in your application, you have to set the theme for that window.

IDarkNet.SetWindowThemeWpf(window, theme);

A good place to call this is in the window's constructor after the call to InitializeComponent, or in an event handler for the window's SourceInitialized event.

If you call it too late (such as after the window is shown), the calls will have no effect.

// MainWindow.xaml.cs
using Dark.Net;

public partial class MainWindow {

    public MainWindow() {
        InitializeComponent();
        DarkNet.Instance.SetWindowThemeWpf(this, Theme.Auto);
    }

}

You must perform this step for every window you show in your application, not just the first one.

Windows Forms

On application startup

Before showing any windows in your application, you may optionally call

IDarkNet.SetCurrentProcessTheme(theme);

A good place to call this is at the start of the Main() method of your application.

// Program.cs
using Dark.Net;

internal static class Program {

    [STAThread]
    private static void Main() {
        DarkNet.Instance.SetCurrentProcessTheme(Theme.Auto);

        // Incomplete example; see below for complete example including showing your first window.
    }
}

Before showing a new window

Before showing each window in your application, you have to set the theme for that window.

IDarkNet.SetWindowThemeForms(window, theme);

You must do this before calling Show() or Application.Run() to show the window. If you call it too late (such as after the window is shown), the calls will have no effect.

Form mainForm = new Form1();
DarkNet.Instance.SetWindowThemeForms(mainForm, Theme.Auto);

You must perform this step for every window you show in your application, not just the first one.

Complete example

// Program.cs
using Dark.Net;

internal static class Program {

    [STAThread]
    private static void Main() {
        Application.EnableVisualStyles();
        Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);
        DarkNet.Instance.SetCurrentProcessTheme(Theme.Auto);

        Form mainForm = new Form1();
        DarkNet.Instance.SetWindowThemeForms(mainForm, Theme.Auto);

        Application.Run(mainForm);
    }

}

Taskbar theme

Windows introduced a preference to choose a dark or light taskbar in Windows 10 version 1903. This is controlled by Settings › Personalization › Colors › Choose your default Windows mode.

DarkNet exposes the value of this preference with the UserTaskbarThemeIsDark property, as well as the change event UserTaskbarThemeIsDarkChanged. You can use these to render a tray icon in the notification area that matches the taskbar's theme, and re-render it when the user preference changes.

Demos

You can download the following precompiled demos, or clone this repository and build the demo projects yourself using Visual Studio Community 2022.

WPF

Download and run darknet-demo-wpf.exe from the latest release.

Windows Forms

Download and run darknet-demo-winforms.exe from the latest release.

Limitations

• This library only changes the theme of the title bar/window chrome/non-client area, as well as the system context menu (the menu that appears when you right click on the title bar, or left click on the title bar icon, or hit Alt+Space). It does not change the theme of the client area of your window. It is up to you to make that look different when dark mode is enabled.
• This library currently does not help you persist a user's choice for the mode they want your application to use across separate process executions. You can expose an option and persist that yourself, then pass the desired Theme value to the methods in this library.

Acknowledgements

• Milan Burda for explaining how to add this in Electron (electron/electron #23479: [Windows] Title bar does not respect dark mode)
• dyasta for an explanation on Stack Overflow
• Richard Yu for implementing this in a C++ library
• Berrysoft for implementing this in Mintty, the Cygwin Terminal emulator (further discussion)