Is there a way to make notepad++ application itself dark?
I like the look of Sublime Text 2 but I prefer using Notepad++ as my default text editor. Is there a way to make the notepad++ application itself dark? More specifically, I would like to change the region highlighted in red to a dark background with a light grey text.
I am on Win 8 (x64).
Thanks in advance!
Solution 1:
Update 2021-06
On 2021-06-07, Notepad++ v8 was released, with dark mode support. (On 2021-06-17, v8.1 followed it with some improvements).
Disclaimer: I haven't actually tried v8 yet, but I assume that the native dark mode support is far superior to modifying and building from source, as discussed in the remainder of this answer.
The themes, as you guessed, can't do this (they only handle what's in the text editing window). To change the colors you'll have to change color values in the source code (download from the site or GitHub).
- Extract the file
- Find the elements whose color you'd like to change, and change them. All colors I've seen are denoted RGB(xx,xx,xx)
- Rebuild (see /readmeFirst.txt once you've extracted)
I've just glanced at these files, but I'm definitely going to work at this a little tomorrow and I don't mind giving you my results once I've solved it.
Anyway, what I've seen at a glance is that you'll want to look in
- /PowerEditor/src/ScitillaComponent/DocTabView (I think)
- /PowerEditor/src/WinControls/TabBar
- /PowerEditor/src/WinControls/ToolBar
That's all I noticed that might be of interest so far, but again, I'll look at it more tomorrow and get back to you.
Edit: the official makefile will give some errors, because /PowerEditor/src/Parameters.h references files incorrectly. Here are the two I fixed so far:
#include "TinyXml/tinyXmlA/tinyxmlA.h" (line 33)
#include "TinyXml/tinyxml.h" (line 37)
Change those lines in Parameters.h to what I've written to deal with them. Don't worry about the warnings ("extra tokens after #endif") - they're just comments.
Edit 2: I'm using VS2012, in which the build process results in numerous errors. I won't post them here unless someone eventually asks about them, in which case I'm happy to do so. I should have a working build up soon!
Edit 3: It seems Notepad++'s provided VS project file was created with an earlier version of Visual Studio, and in updating the files, Visual Studio 2012 creates many problems, so if you go that route, use VS2010.
Edit 4: I didn't make it obvious in Edit 3, but I gave up after realizing just how difficult it was going to be to get around the VS errors. I imagine the code has changed significantly since I wrote this answer as well; unfortunately I didn't note the version, but I'm sure it was the latest available at time of writing this answer, which, according to "All versions", was probably either 6.4.1 or 6.4.2. However, I hope this is a useful starting point for anyone else who reads (this answer has received consistent attention since writing).
Solution 2:
Use WindowBlinds from Stardock . It supports global skinning for all apps in Windows but I believe you can also give it special instructions for skinning individual apps.
Solution 3:
You can press alt+shift+print screen and it will change all colors of windows to dark including Notepad++.
You can change the tab colors in notepad++ and it changes the tab writing and the tab background and perhaps the window I don't know.
I have written a Notepad++ dark theme generator here with 700 ready made high contrast Notepad++ themes to download:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/wrote-a-random-notepad-theme-generator.393215/#post-2564857
Solution 4:
Another option would be to switch on the Magnifier:
Start + R > Magnify.exe
Just put it on 100%, so it doesn't magnify and then press Ctrl+Alt+I. It will invert all the colors on the screen, so white becomes black and vice versa! Just make sure to choose a white color scheme in Notepad++ and tada!
As a "bonus" you can also try to add a hue shift of 50% (at least if you have NVidia, I think) to get the original hues back and still have the dark and light shades swapped.
On Windows 10 another more fitting (and perhaps better) option exists. For inverting the brightness (and optionally inverted + grayscale), you can use the color filters for accessibility (link to the Microsoft article on the settings page):
Start > Settings > Ease of Access > Color filters
If the keyboard shortcut is enabled, you can now use Ctrl+Win+C to toggle your previously chosen color filter.