Customizing Windows 11 GUI: Mica For Everyone 1.0.5 Provides More Transparency

System Tool Mica For Everyone brings more transparency under Windows 11 and makes the GUI more customizable. The small but no less powerful tool, written in the general-purpose object-oriented programming language C#, allows for far-reaching modifications to the user interface.

Small custom GUI helper

The free Mica For Everyone software, distributed under the MIT license, is based on Microsoft’s DwmSetWindowAttribute and thus enables the user to create custom GUI settings for Win32 applications and applications as well as system components such as Windows Explorer.

• Mica For Everyone is a small system tool to customize system background on win32 applications using DwmSetWindowAttribute and other methods.
• It can apply a mecha or other background texture to a non-client area, window frame or background of supported applications and its behavior can be customized through the GUI and configuration file.
• There are many modes and patterns to choose from such as Light, Dark, Mica, Acrylic and Tabbed

Mica release notes for everyone 1.0.5

As the configuration file of the system applet reveals, there are many Windows 11 GUI customization presets to choose from, which can influence the title bar, background, and window of applications. The user decides, for example, to include or exclude Windows Explorer from the changes.

# Mica For Everyone Configuration

Global {
  TitleBarColor             = System  # available modes: Default, System, Light, Dark (case sensitive)
  BackdropPreference        = Mica    # available modes: Default, None, Mica, Acrylic, Tabbed
  ExtendFrameIntoClientArea = False   # enable to apply backdrop on background of apps (not recommended)
  EnableBlurBehind          = False   # make window translucent
}

# don't touch explorer and mspaint
Process: "explorer" { }
Process: "mspaint" { }

# apply Mica background to Console Host window
Class: "ConsoleWindowClass" {
  TitleBarColor             = Dark
  BackdropPreference        = Mica
  ExtendFrameIntoClientArea = True
}

For example, the acrylic preset allows a slight transparency effect for windows, while Mica extends the visual style of Windows 11 to all compatible Win32 applications.

Location office modr Try out the tool in a preliminary release in February and give it a go.

Version 1.0.5.0 just released

Few hours ago, the new stable version 1.0.5.0 was released on the GitHub developer platform and requires Visual C++ Runtime as well as .NET Core 3.1 Runtime. The tool should also be available directly from the Microsoft Store in Windows 11 in the near future.