Dark mode completely? Even win32 parts? How?

Hello guys, I have a very frustrating issue regarding the legacy parts of W11 that refuse to go in dark mode.

I am a designer and sometimes I work with some custom, in-house utilities that use the win32 parts of the win11 - you know, those still white. And its very very frustrating to have them kill my eyes while everything else is nicely dark. Now, my question is - how may I skin those in dark mode too? I see that some 3rd party skins are doing that, but I don't want to install another skin, I just want to modify the files responsible for those parts of windows. Can anyone help me with that? Im not a programmer but I know my way around resourcehacker and I can also learn to use other utilities if needed. Thank you very much.

PS: Of course, I will release the mod for free, as long as someone help me do it.

For the most part, StartAllBack does it for me.

Unfortunately doesn't work in my app - Reaper. Still all-white windows, even with StartAllBack installed .

if you figure it out, let me know lol. Regedit, Task Scheduler, Device Manager, etc are always white mode. You can use something like

Dark Mode Any App – Enable Dark Mode On Any Windows Application or

to apply high contrast to an individual app, if that helps you at all... but probably not

dacrone said:

if you figure it out, let me know lol. Regedit, Task Scheduler, Device Manager, etc are always white mode. You can use something like

Dark Mode Any App – Enable Dark Mode On Any Windows Application or

Easy Window Invert

www.wintools.info

to apply high contrast to an individual app, if that helps you at all... but probably not

Click to expand...

Thanks, but no, not really helping. I tried dark mode any app and it just applies a black overlay to the window which is quite slow and also clipping when moving the window. I know however know for a fact that I must modify some sort of DLL or something like that to achieve the desired effect, many theme designers are doing it, but seems like none wants to give that secret away. One theme in particular that I was using on win10 was doing it - penumbra theme. But I cannot install it anymore since I moved to W11.

try this one:

dacrone said:

try this one:

GreyEveTheme - Windows 10 / 11 High Contrast Theme by eversins on DeviantArt

www.deviantart.com

Click to expand...

Thanks, but its still based on the high contrast theme. which messes up other parts of the OS.

On a positive note I think the files to be modified are shellstyle.dll and/or shellstyle.dll.mui, but not sure, I hope someone more experienced will confirm this. Thanks.

@6200rpm
I thought Reaper had a dark UI by default!?

Edwin said:

@6200rpm
I thought Reaper had a dark UI by default!?

Click to expand...

Its not skinnable 100%. Only the MCP & TCP (mixer/track control panel). Any other parts use win32 default UI, which is white even on w11 pro dark.

6200rpm said:

Its not skinnable 100%. Only the MCP & TCP (mixer/track control panel). Any other parts use win32 default UI, which is white even on w11 pro dark.

Click to expand...

Ah! Got ya!

Seems that there is a patch called rectify11 that does exactly what I need. The problem is I don't know what are the files affected and how can I do it myself once the windows will update.