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I am running Windows 7 with Aero enabled and everything about my theme unchanged. I have tried various ways of adjusting colors and translucency, but I can't seem to find a way to make the active window's titlebar more distinctive (compared with the inactive windows).

I don't mind registry or manual theme hacking (if someone can explain what I need to do), but I can't go downloading arbitrary software on to my machine.

Here is a screenshot of two windows, the one on the left being the active window: Screenshot

Ideas?

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I've been looking for a solution that doesn't need additional software for quite a while now. Instead I've retrained myself to check if the close button background is red, which helps, sometimes. – user112553 Mar 22 '12 at 15:30

2 Answers

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Title bar colors simply don't exist in Aero. Nor are they an indicator for the focus state of an application.

In Aero, there is no distinct title bar. There is just the window chrome, which is the background for the whole window. Now, there is only a single color to be defined that is applied to the whole window.

Focus state of an application is communicated through drop shadows on the window and the colorization of the chrome elements.

If you think the effect is too subtle, you can only adjust it through this slider: enter image description here

If that's all still too boring for you, maybe something like Aura is for you.

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Fine, window chrome color, whatever it's called. But the chrome color does change between when a window is focused and not, but it doesn't change enough to make it distinctive/noticeable. With 2-3 large high-res monitors, it is very easy to lose track of which windows is focused, and having to click on a window every time is time consuming and distracting. – Adam Batkin Mar 22 '12 at 17:20
Which is why I showed you in my answer how to approach the problem. If you find that this is not sufficient for you, then you might have to disable Aero and look into the basic themes that provide you with higher contrast options. – Oliver Salzburg♦ Mar 22 '12 at 17:28
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Have you tried changing the advanced settings of "Change Window Glass Colors?"

I changed color 1/2 to white, now the inactive window is obviously different

I changed color 1 & 2 to white, now the inactive window is obviously different, you can try playing with these colors.

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That doesn't affect the Aero titlebar colors. – Oliver Salzburg♦ Mar 22 '12 at 15:13
...but it's the only workaround. goodbye aero :-/ – gcb Apr 19 at 0:12
also, you can click the border, increase the size, and select a nice color. almost feels like a solid CDE window manager :) – gcb Apr 19 at 0:13

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