Cubase 12 and windows 11 dark mode

I have Windows 11 running in dark mode where window title bars are a very dark grey.
So why are the Cubase 12 window title bars white?
Kind of ruins the effect and hints at poor coding?

Anyone know any work arounds for this? - so I can restore my dark vibe

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Poor coding? Seriously. Dark mode isnā€™t supported on Cubase Windows.

You can fiddle with the colors in Windows Settings, thereā€™s a thingy for coloring title bars

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What I mean is that, for example, all of Adobe Creative Cloud apps are fully Dark mode compliant - Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop etc. If they can do it why canā€™t Cubase?

The ā€˜thingyā€™ for coloring title bars doesn,t exist any more - in Windows 11 you get darkmode, a background colour and an accent colour - all of mine are set to dark grey.

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:flushed: everybody stop what youā€™re doing ā€¦ :rofl:

Thanks for your help StevieBeeā€¦much appreciated

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Ahā€¦I hadnā€™t read that in any release notes? Have you got a link? Thanks

No, sorry. Itā€™s Windows Settings

So I played with some settings:

Cubase 12 is recognising the Accent colour for Windows 11 Title bars - but only for the active window.
So I normally have main project window and mix console window open - the active one will have a dark title bar. The Inactive one will have a white title bar.
The main program menu at the top of the screen is always active so is always dark.
If I edit a channel - so the channel window pops up - the project and mixer title bars go white and the channel title bar is dark (because it is now active).

Itā€™s like a built in light show when youā€™re working in a dark room :slight_smile:

I know itā€™s not a deal breaker - but there has always been something odd about how Cubase uses windows to run different functions of the program which is demonstrated through this ā€˜problemā€™.
Other complex software - e.g. Adobe donā€™t have this issue

Was kind of hoping it might have got fixed in C12 - hereā€™s hoping for lucky C13.

Apart from this C12 is rocking on my machine - definite CPU performance gains and all rock solid for me!

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I donā€™t know if Cubase can control the inactive title bar color, I think maybe it cannot. But if you like to edit the registry you can do this to control the inactive title bar color.:

Add a 32 bit DWORD to Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\DWM

Name it: AccentColorInactive

Give it a value for the color you want, I use c0c0c0 which is in the gray family.

Step by step:
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/32118-how-change-color-inactive-title-bar-windows-10-a.html
titlebar

Can confirm, changing the registry color is the best way to do it. I set it to match the accent color over a year ago and its much more aesthetically pleasing.

Thanks Steve - I had already tried the regedit route. It certainly allows you to specify the Inactive window colour for most apps - however it doesnā€™t affect the Inactive window colour in Cubase 12.

This is why I think itā€™s a coding thing - the inactive Cubase window always becomes white - regardless of the AccentColorInactive value?

Thanks for your help though!

Certainly it does, as evidenced by it working for me and for @dylanmixer

Hi Dylan,
I can see that it appears to be working for you. I wonder whether the fact that you are using two monitors is overcoming the poblem Iā€™m having. What happens when you put the Project window and the Mixer window on the same monitor?

Have you double checked that you edited correctly?

Did you sign out of your Windows User or restart?

Needed a full re-boot to make it work in Cubase - It affected all the other apps without a re-boot!

Also doesnā€™t work if you set the inactive colour to 000000 - i.e. black, Cubase reverts to white again

Thanks for the encouragement guys!

Thereā€™s a free little program called Winaero Tweaker which provides an easy way to change the color of Inactive Title Bars. And a lot of other possibilities. Itā€™s a standalone application, no installation.

Duhhh , iā€™ve been trying for weeks to sort this out , some silly blind bugger spell Color with a low case ā€˜Cā€™ . Cheers for this post :+1: :ok_hand:

Itā€™s worth pointing out that the menu color itself in Cubase for Windows is hard-coded in areas around the text to light grey. While you can set the menu color to something different through the registry, Cubase will only honor parts of the color not around the text, so you get sort of a flat ā€œlinux-likeā€ button effect to the menu.

While not a bug per se, it certainly does look like the Windows branch did not get as much UI love as it could/should have. This is especially true considering they just put out Cubase 13 with a UI overhaul of a lot more controversial areas.

Cubase Dev Team, can you make the main menu in Cubase for windows more consistent with styling for the button panel menus in the rest of the UI?