How to get the active window title color brush on Windows 8.1?

Question

I'm trying to get a brush with the system color of an active window, or this blue color off my Windows 8.1 for example:

So I do this:

HANDLE hBrush = GetSysColorBrush(COLOR_ACTIVECAPTION);

But the color that brush gives me is this:

Any idea what am I doing wrong here?

`GetThemeSysColorBrush`, and in general look at Visual Styles API — Igor Tandetnik, Aug 01 '15 at 04:50
@IgorTandetnik: Thanks. But what am I supposed to pass as the 1st parameter, or `hTheme`? If I pass `NULL` then it returns NULL as well. — c00000fd, Aug 01 '15 at 05:10
@DavidHeffernan: Hmm, guys. I'm not sure I understand how it works. I just tried `OpenThemeData(hWnd, L"window");` and then `TMT_ACTIVECAPTION` for `iColorID` but it gave me just a gray color. Moreover none of other flags gave me this expected blue as I showed above. — c00000fd, Aug 01 '15 at 05:43
I don't think any theme handles will get GetThemeSysColorBrush to return sensible values. Only GetThemeSysColor seems to work. — Angus Johnson, Apr 22 '18 at 13:10

Fukzito Fuczi · Answer 1 · 2015-08-01T22:21:34.553

0

You could try with "0xA" or "COLOR_ACTIVEBORDER" as documented in GetSysColor Function at MSND: GetSysColor Function

HANDLE hBrush = GetSysColorBrush(COLOR_ACTIVEBORDER);

edited Aug 01 '15 at 22:21

answered Aug 01 '15 at 05:00

Fukzito Fuczi

`COLOR_ACTIVEBORDER` has a value of `10`, not `0x10`. – IInspectable Aug 01 '15 at 18:29

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:51

0

Supposedly, DwmGetColorizationColor return this color value.

On Windows 7/Vista, it sounds like the situation was much more complicated due to the glass translucency effects: Vista/7: How to get glass color?

Since you're dealing with Windows 8.1, transparency is disabled, so this should provide the opaque color for the Window.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:51

Community

answered Aug 20 '15 at 18:22

Ryand

2 Answers2