Respect Windows System Light/Dark mode - Switch theme

Help & Support
1

Hi,
i think it would be great if Dopus could respect the windows system settings for Light or Dark mode, and load a relevant theme.

Since use of light and dark modes is now standard on most OS i see the functionality to dynamically/visually integrate into the system as something we should expect from an excellent software like Directory Opus.

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2

We're working on it, but the Windows dark theme is a completely half-baked load of trash that doesn't work on 80% of the common controls, because Microsoft only implemented it for the handful of standard controls their software still uses, which is not much these days.

We already support arbitrary colors (not just the silly light or dark choice Windows offers) for the things we render ourselves, but allowing you to change the colors of all the standard controls requires hooking the OS so that we can draw them ourselves instead of the OS drawing them, since the OS now only knows how to draw most things in a light theme.

(This is on top of all the Dark Mode APIs in Windows 10 still being completely undocumented, unsupported, and changing quite regularly. Windows 10 is a joke, but one we have to live with.)

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3

ok thanks for the reply..

  • Dark mode API aside, what about an option to allow us to switch between existing user-defined color themes on a schedule or even just manually/script?
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4

You can save and load themes to do that.

5

indeed, according to the documentation,
"The Prefs internal command can be used to: Load and save Lister themes"
but the only command shown is: "Prefs THEMES" - which merely opens the theme modal dialog

...would it be possible to please show an example of how to load a lister theme (.dlt file) using the internal command?

6

I'm not sure there is a way to fully automate loading a theme. You'll need to click on it to load it.

(Your request did say "or even just manually".)

7

Hi,
There is little utility I use until windows decides to make a native tool as they already have done with night light shift, named auto-dark mode.
In the about section it mentions three windows tools used to implement its functionality:
Task scheduler, fluentWFP and InputSimulator.

Perhaps Opus can use the same to be able to switch between two predefined themes
as mentioned by subatomiq??

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