REQUEST: Dark Theme for Windows 10

[samkatakouzinos]

REQUEST: Dark Theme for Windows 10
Please consider?

[xCSxXenon]

Not priority, but +1

[titleunknown]

+1

[jmsxl]

Yes, please and for Mac OS too.

[BazCuda]

You mean, like this... :P

FFS.png (398.89 KiB) Viewed 85091 times

[xCSxXenon]

Shows picture of almost exactly what we want.
Doesn't even hint at how to get it done.
I'm guessing the source code was changed

[BazCuda]

No, no source code change. It was a long hard trial-and-error process of customising my entire Windows 10 Pro setup to look like this, which in a very small nutshell was...

1. Put Windows 10 into Dark Mode.
2. Put Windows Explorer into Dark Mode.
2. Experiment with altering the RGB colours in [mostly] the following registry key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors

Some applications are better behaved at using the system-wide colour settings. Others, mostly notably Microsoft's own, completely ignore the settings and do their own thing. Notepad does a combination. I suspect this is why the old Colors Customization facility was removed in Windows - too many of their own applications ignored the settings, especially with the advent of the ubiquitous Ribbon. There are tools which attempt to replicate the old tool, such as "Color Classic" from WinTools.info which was certainly a help up to a point, if nothing else for identifying the required registry keys. I think I also used a bit of WinAero Tweaker at some point.

As I say, you sometimes have to take the rough with the smooth. Occasionally, an application will insist on using black as its text color while at the same time adhering to the background colour from the registry, making text difficult to read. But then, we've all done it...much easier to set label.text.color to clBlack than go digging around in the system settings for the user's preferences, which is what we should have been doing. The majority of the apps I use look good; the others are used so infrequently that a bit of squinting to read the black text is acceptable.

It's all a question of swings and roundabouts. For the most part, FFS is well-behaved except, as you can see (or not) that the MB/s speed in the top graph can't be read, but my chosen text colour looks good on the dark background. On the other hand, the built-in TreeView component in Windows, used by so many apps, is almost always displayed with a white background. Again, FFS bucks the trend, fortunately.

[BazCuda]

As an addendum, here's an export of my current HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors
However, I cannot by any means guarantee that simply applying these colour values will immediately make your setup look like mine. As I said above, it was a trial-and-error process, a bit like trying to fix the kink in a hosepipe - you fix the colours so one app looks good and then discover that another app is completely unusable.

I've renamed the attachment from colors.reg to colors.txt

And an example of Microsoft's software sometimes adhering to their own rules, and sometimes not, often within the same application ! ....

regpad.png (211.54 KiB) Viewed 85086 times

[Zenju]

For the most part, FFS is well-behaved except, as you can see (or not) that the MB/s speed in the top graph can't be read

Inded, fixed for the next release!

In general, FFS is using system colors everywhere. The only reason why "Dark Mode" support for FFS on Windows 10 is not available right now is that Microsoft has decided to limit its support to Windows Store apps, while leaving Win32 apps out in the dark.

[samkatakouzinos]

"out in the dark"
I see what you did there… :)

[tfa]

dark mode +1

[rrhobbs]

Dark mode / theme +1

[Hersir]

Dark Mode / Them +1

[woody]

Dark mode +1

[el_beaver]

Dark mode +1 from me too!

[Synchronizator]

+1

And there is also this topic about dark mode: viewtopic.php?t=6954

[Hersir]

+1

And there is also this topic about dark mode: viewtopic.php?t=6954

For what it's worth, here it is a specific request.

[moongate]

Dark Mode / Theme +1

[Hersir]

Dark Mode / Theme +1

[moongate]

When I posted to this thread 3 days ago there have already been 3.5k views on this topic.
3 days later we are hitting 4k.

While I understand there are a lot of priorities in terms of feature requests to FFS, this is already one of the most viewed topics that is still receiving regular updates and has not been implemented already..

While in the past dark mode was just a nice to have, more and more oled and mini-led monitors are available at resonable prices.

So dark mode becomes mandatory to preserve oled life span as well as avoid sun burn on the retina :-)

With that merry christmas to everyone.

[Sander Bouwhuis]

Dark mode is incredibly useful, especially when using (very) large monitors. With FFS it's like I'm staring into the sun.

[moongate]

Microsoft provides support for developers on how to approach dark mode implementation to apps.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/desktop/modernize/apply-windows-themes

But one will need to think about maintaining two UI color schemes moving forward or to implement the method that detects the preference set in windows by the user.

I know we would all like a quick implementation but it seems complicated for the developer to implement it into mature software.

The VLC media player team is struggling with it for years now with their current 3.x version of the player.

At the same time they have an alpha or developer version of VLC 4.0 available which comes with dark mode as standard.

But then again it is a complete re-write of the VLC player and while it has dark mode it now lacks a lot of feature already available in 3.x

Maybe it is just a time and skill thing at this point.

[Synchronizator]

[...]
The VLC media player team is struggling with it for years now with their current 3.x version of the player.
[...]

For the longest time the sole developer of Mp3tag was saying NO to implementing dark mode due to inability of re-writing a large portion of code

And then, one day, its community suddenly got its holy grail just like that, with a brief story about past failures in implementing this feature

[TonyFFS]

Oh man, this would be an incredibly useful feature. On my 32" screen, every time I open FreeFileSync I have to put on sun glasses!

[moongate]

Thank your for another great release (13.4) and another vote for darkmode for us oled and big screen users.

[FreeFileLove]

BTW, I realize this won't help most people here, but if it helps anyone, FreeFileSync supports dark themes quite well in Windows 7. You just create a dark theme for the OS, and FreeFileSync will use that dark theme.

[moongate]

*bump* two more FFS updates have been released since I last checked on dark mode status. Dark Mode is not yet included in FFS. Yet it is one of the most requested, commented and viewed features in the forum.

[xCSxXenon]

In general, FFS is using system colors everywhere. The only reason why "Dark Mode" support for FFS on Windows 10 is not available right now is that Microsoft has decided to limit its support to Windows Store apps, while leaving Win32 apps out in the dark.

[Synchronizator]

So... FFS on Windows 11 is able to utilize dark mode of the operating system?

[xCSxXenon]

So... FFS on Windows 11 is able to utilize dark mode of the operating system?

no

[BazCuda]

Of course, one possible solution is [for the author] to simply choose a dark color scheme and implement it manually, with no reference to Windows or to either its color schemes or its color palettes, as I have done for some of my own software, e.g. CustomMenu (see screenshots at https://github.com/BazzaCuda/CustomMenu). Of course, the app is then permanently in Dark Mode, which I was happy with for my own software but the author of FFS may be against. It saved me a lot of headaches that way, pre-empting the inevitable requests for a Dark Mode. I have had zero requests for a Light Mode :P
Just a thought.

[BazCuda]

In general, FFS is using system colors everywhere. The only reason why "Dark Mode" support for FFS on Windows 10 is not available right now is that Microsoft has decided to limit its support to Windows Store apps, while leaving Win32 apps out in the dark.

Another [possibly] straight-forward solution might be to have a colors.ini file and name each type of control used in FFS. In colors.ini you then specify hexadecimal RRGGBB digits for each control and devise a manual dark mode for FFS (read and applied at app launch) which is entirely separate from and totally unreliant on the vagueries of the Windows color scheme mechanisms. We could then, even, share our colors.ini files with each other on here. This is, in effect, mimicking what the old color palette dialog used to do in Windows, except it's limited to FFS's controls not system wide.

[Inertia at barbeque]

Let me be toxic for a minute. Instead of having hundreds of people doing registry and ini file editing maybe the dev could finally update the ass gui library from 2003 and fix this for us all. The software is highly functional and one update solely focused on modernizing the gui would no doubt help with usability and dark theme could be easier to implement.
Love throwing this under "low priority" while talking about the f* literal interfacing between user and the software.

EDIT: jeez... wxWidgets is awful, every other GUI library too, eternal pain

[xCSxXenon]

Let me be toxic for a minute. Instead of having hundreds of people doing registry and ini file editing maybe the dev could finally update the ass gui library from 2003 and fix this for us all. The software is highly functional and one update solely focused on modernizing the gui would no doubt help with usability and dark theme could be easier to implement.
Love throwing this under "low priority" while talking about the f* literal interfacing between user and the software.

If you actually look for a minute, you'll see the difficulty in "just implementing a dark mode". Maintaining such a feature is a massive manual feat. Being open source, you should be able to figure out how to implement dark mode fairly easily, right? Let us know when you get it ironed out, we expect support for future versions of FFS and operating systems in case something breaks.
Forums are a bad place to be toxic, more so when you lack the basic understanding of the implementation requirements or the developer's response to such, and even more so for software that is completely free.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

EDIT: I yearn for a dark mode along with everyone else.

[xCSxXenon]

Here, I did the leg work for you!
viewtopic.php?t=6954&start=60
viewtopic.php?p=40199#p21891

[Inertia at barbeque]

I'm not saying it is easy and that I can implement it. I rely on FFS and I haven't found better alternative. I just wanted to say that gui and dark mode aren't secondary features. And you are right, I of course don't know how much the software is relying on specific platform ui elements, but I would guess lot of it can also be made platform agnostic.
And btw I have the ThemeTool hack installed so I have the FFS basically in dark mode, but native stuff would be great for others.

[samkatakouzinos]

I love this! Thank you so much for making dark theme available.
Windows 11 with Free File Sync in Dark Mode.

— Regards, Sam Katakouzinos

[Jmungandr]

Finally a beautiful Dark Mode <3 This means another donation is on the way :) I encourage all to do the same!

Thank you! Greatest software and now it doesn't blind me anymore!

[TonyFFS]

Thank you for the Dark Mode on release 14.0! I just made a donation to the project. It feels good when highly sought features are implemented. :)

[Inertia at barbeque]

Thank you for the Dark Mode, made donation as well