Question: THIS : github.com/RobKor77/ReaperDarkMode; life saviour for Windows user who are tired of staring the white bright lines and windows even in dark theme because of Windows legacy stuffs. Justin, you should include it in your installer haha. It's very good, almost feels like native. Just the EULA and Changelong in About window are white, other than these, all are dark. And by applying Reapertips Theme, REAPER becomes even more beautiful and appealing to look into, looks like a pure, dark theme softwa Asked by Abhi (223.181.44.x) on July 11 2026, 5:58pm Reply on July 11 2026, 6:24pm:
Problem is, that extension does a lot of really messy, dirty things to the OS, in order to make it work. We could do the same, but it leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. My hope is that someday MS makes there be a clean way to do this stuff.
Comments:
Posted by Abhi (223.181.44.x) on July 13 2026, 8:36pm:
Messy, dirty things like??
Posted by Justin on July 13 2026, 11:03pm:
hooking/subclassing all windows, etc. I remember there were some REAPER bugs users reported which only manifested when the plug-in was installed... things we could work around, for sure, but it's all just a mess. Not implementing it is a bit of a protest against MS's handling of this...
Posted by Rob Kor (46.122.97.x) on July 21 2026, 9:52am:
Modifying REAPER externally is "messy" only because it requires global hooks and subclassing. If implemented natively, devs already control the WndProc, so no subclassing is needed—making it vastly cleaner. Since MS won't fix Win32, why not add a native dark mode as an "Experimental/Not recommended" UI tweak? Let users choose between strict architectural purity and eye strain.
Posted by Justin on July 22 2026, 5:32pm:
You still need to use global hooks because there are dozens windows we don't control (e.g., file browsing windows), and on top of that there are hundreds of REAPER-native windows that would need to get hooked. Then there's dealing with drawing menus and menubars etc. But yeah maybe we should do that.
Posted by Justin on July 22 2026, 7:10pm:
but yeah ok I'll add it in, thanks for MIT licensing it Rob!
Posted by Justin on July 23 2026, 12:16am:
(but setting aside the hooks, even if we avoid them, the subclassing and soooo much code with special case handling... is all, indeed, a mess. :)
Posted by Rob Kor (46.122.67.x) on July 23 2026, 6:47am:
Thanks Justin! I'm sure you will handle this in the best professional way possible. All the best, Rob