Applying custom Windows styles to Firefox, Chrome, and other Chromium browser’s window buttons in Windows 10 & 11

Typically, browser vendors force default button styles onto the program. This can be troublesome when you use something like SecureUxTheme to change your Windows styles, and you care about the cohesiveness. There is a hacky solution, even if the Firefox forums told me there wasn’t. ?

DEFAULT: Custom themed Notepad next to standard browsers

For Google Chrome, Edge, Brave, and some other Chromium-based browsers

For Chromium based browsers you can simply change the shortcut target to allow launching with your custom changes.

  1. Open start menu.
  2. Search and find your browser shortcut
  3. Right-click, and open file location
  4. Right click > open Properties of the browser shortcut (The shortcut for Chrome in the Start Menu may be found in C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs)
  5. Add this line --disable-windows10-custom-titlebar to the end of the Target field after a space. (For Chrome, “C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” becomes “C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” –disable-windows10-custom-titlebar )
  6. In order for your changes to show up you may need to use Task Manager (ctrl + shift + esc) and kill all background processes of that browser
  7. Repeat for each browser shortcut you use.

Changing the Registry Launch settings

This is all well and good but what if you click on a link and the browser opens automatically? Now we aren’t using the custom launch option anymore. We can edit the registry to fix this.

This is the “I’m not responsible if you break your computer” warning: BE SURE TO ALWAYS MAKE A BACKUP OF THE REGISTRY BEFORE PERFORMING ANY CHANGES.

  1. Launch the Registry Editor (Win + R, regedit)
  2. Navigate to Computer\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\ChromeHTML\shell\open\command
  3. Change the (Default) value from "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --single-argument %1 to "C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --disable-windows10-custom-titlebar --single-argument %1
    • We are essentially just adding that custom launch argument onto the default launch arguments Windows calls when it opens the program
  4. Starting the browser now use your themed settings. Older versions Chromium may have a different startup option. Try --disable-features=Windows10CustomTitlebar if it doesn’t work for you

Firefox

Firefox needs CSS and changing an internal flag in order to work.

  1. Open your Firefox profile. You can find it in %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles, try looking at the one most recently modified.
  2. If the folder doesn’t exist already, create a folder called ‘chrome‘. Yes, this is the tutorial for Firefox.
  3. Inside the ‘chrome‘ folder in your profile, create or edit the file ‘userChrome.css‘.
  4. Put these contents (or embedded down below) into the css file, either on its own or adding to what is already there. You can modify anything you want, such as the ‘titlebar-button:hover’ alpha value to your liking.
  5. Open a new Firefox window
  6. Enter about:config into the URL bar, and bypass the warning
  7. Change the toolkit. legacyUserProfileCustomizations. stylesheets option to true by double clicking.
  8. Restart Firefox
@namespace xul url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul");
@namespace html url("http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml");
.titlebar-button {
background-color: transparent !important;
transition: background-color 0.5s ease;
height: 0px;
}
.titlebar-button>.toolbarbutton-icon {
list-style-image: none;
}
.titlebar-button:hover {
background-color: rgba(121, 121, 121, 0.1) !important;
}
#titlebar-close:hover {
background-color: rgba(121, 121, 121, 0.1) !important;
}
#titlebar-close:hover>.toolbarbutton-icon {
list-style-image: url("chrome://browser/skin/caption-buttons.svg#close-white") !important;
}
#main-window {
-moz-appearance: -moz-win-glass !important;
background: transparent !important;
}
#navigator-toolbox {
background: transparent !important
}
view raw userChrome.css hosted with ❤ by GitHub

And finally, get my better dark theme for Firefox. 🙂


Now your browser buttons look sleek and uniform, just like the rest of your system.


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Published 2022-07-31 09:03:00

Better dark theme for Firefox

If you wanted a more cohesive dark theme on Firefox (or never noticed but now it won’t stop bothering you):

I made an updated dark theme a while ago, here’s the published link

Without updated dark theme:

Settings tab is hovered with mouse

With updated dark theme:

Settings tab is hovered with mouse

Cheers


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Published 2021-12-08 11:52:15

Windows 11… Simply Unnecessary

Windows 11 is wholly unnecessary, and shouldn’t even exist.

If we ignore the fact that Microsoft stated Windows 10 was the last version of their operating system, and the seemingly obvious missed opportunity to simply rebrand Windows 10 to “Windows” alone like Apple did, then we can look at their proposed reasons for the change.

Why Microsoft is Rebranding

When Windows 10 came out, it was supposed to usher in a new standard of operating under the Microsoft family. The start menu was brought all the way back in comparison with Windows 8.1, and they finally fixed a number of graphical issues users were having.

The rebrand to Windows 10 was for the numerous changes they’d done to the operating system, back then.

So what changes to instigate a new OS now?

A New Name Means Distance from Old Identity

Changing a name is a great way to distance a person, place, or thing from old actions or non applicable qualities that exist currently. It’s a way to signal change, that something is not the same as before.

Microsoft and other corporations use this strategy often to create positive attention for their brand or distance themselves from negative attention.

And Windows 10 has had a lot of negative attention:

A quick search will pull up almost unlimited articles complaining about Windows 10.

With the recent failure of Windows 10 X, Microsoft had enough.

So What’s New?

Really, that’s the most important thing, isn’t it? Are the changes any good?

Well, no.

Unless you want a bunch of features you could already achieve in Windows 10 with more bloat, more integrated applications, less customization, and more restrictions on which hardware you can install it on.

Windows 11 still has bloatware in the preview builds, and they’ve had updates before which has reinstall all preinstalled apps. Microsoft Teams will now be integrated into the taskbar. I don’t have high hopes for the Teams integration if the weather icon they tried to add to the taskbar and failed miserably with is any indication. The “News and Interests” taskbar option causes the taskbar to update arbitrarily and File Explorer to lag, and the font is grainy and pixelated on a monitor with higher than 1080p.

Well what about the centered taskbar?

Wouldn’t it be great if you could already do that in Windows 10?

Center Taskbar Windows 10 Dark Theme

Oh wait. You can.

This is what my desktop looks like currently on 21H1. I also have a custom dark theme installed to properly theme some of the discrepancies out of the OS like the Task Manager, the dialogue options, and even Notepad.

Using TaskbarX, SecureUXTheme, and a few other dependencies, you can already create what I believe to be a better look than what Windows 11 delivers out of the box.

Changing UX Design

Notice that the start button is on the bottom left in the image above. Now look at a picture of the new Windows 11 taskbar:

The start button has moved to the center with the other icons.

THIS IS BAD UX DESIGN.

Why?

Because when a button is on an edge that you can move your mouse against, it has an infinite width. If you drag your mouse against the left edge of your (leftmost) monitor, it cannot move outside the screen and thus any button on the edge of the screen would be easier to quickly whip the mouse over and click.

In the same way, when a button is in a corner such as the start button was in most previous versions of Windows, it is much easier to drag your mouse to the corner quickly without aiming at all, as two sides have infinite width. This makes it extremely efficient to locate the start button, no matter the cursor location.

However, by moving the start button to the center of the taskbar, Microsoft eliminates that smart UX choice they made all those years ago.

Perhaps Microsoft will realize this and provide an option to restore the default alignment in a later update. As of 8/2/2021, this is not possible.

Additionally, they eliminated the option to align the taskbar to the left or right in the latest version.

The main concern for me as Microsoft continually whips around GUI updates is… how has Windows fundamentally changed since the last big update? And how are they fixing the small issues that continue to plague normal operations throughout the working day? Well, the answers to both of those questions are pretty disappointing.

A) It hasn’t changed that much, so don’t expect to notice much difference

B) They haven’t fixed that much, so don’t expect to notice much difference

And that’s where we are. Another graphical change to an OS in an era where to this day, on the latest Windows build, you can open command prompt and hold F11 down to see the old Windows 7 UI underneath for a split second as the GUI is overwritten with the new theme.

Split second after you hit F11 to minimize the CMD prompt window out of fullscreen.

Progress Is Not Bad

But there has to be progress. Windows 11 is completely unnecessary for what they are bringing to the table in the new versions. In a perfect world, maybe Windows 10 would have been rebranded to “Windows” with thematic naming to keep versions clear, saved the sweeping UI upgrades until AFTER THEY’VE FINISHED THE EXISTING DARK THEME FOR THEIR CURRENT OS, and maybe don’t make yet another “Settings” app before the old Control Panel is even removed.

I’ll say it again, I would love for Microsoft to be innovating here, but where is it? What can be achieved on Windows 11 that can’t already be accomplished on existing hardware and software?

“Windows 11 has all the power and security of Windows 10 with a redesigned and refreshed look. It also comes with new tools, sounds, and apps. Every detail has been considered. All of it comes together to bring you a refreshing experience on your PC.”

I suppose nothing. It’s not like I would consider whatever Microsoft is shipping with their OS to be essential apps, probably just a new version of candy crush 😉.

At the very least, Microsoft says they will still support Windows 10 for 4 more years, until 2025. Maybe by that time, Windows Infinity will have hit shelves and I can skip 11.

Honestly, just please make one settings app and I’ll be happy. ?


If you want to improve your Windows 10 experience by searching with any browser and Google from your start menu instead of Bing, read this.


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Published 2021-07-27 18:55:20