I like to joke that we already had dark mode on Window 95. It didn't work super well with black colored icons but you could always just tone down how dark you made it.
We also had pseudo-dark mode themes for Windows XP. But the new dark mode stuff in explorer doesn't use uxtheme anymore.
> I like to joke that we already had dark mode on Window 95.
When I say it, it's not a joke! :D
> But the new dark mode stuff in explorer doesn't use uxtheme anymore.
I'm only familiar with Windows 10, and in that version Windows Explorer seemed to conform to the system color scheme just fine. Did Microsoft break that at some point in the past three, four months, [0] or did they royally fuck the dog in Windows 11?
For me, the *maddening* color-scheme-nonconformance was Task Manager. No matter what I did, it was *white*. It made it substantially unpleasant when you wanted to check a performance something-or-other in a dark room.
[0] Ever since I learned just how well video games work on Linux (via Steam), I've not booted into Windows. It's so nice. Folks report that there are launchers to run games in the Epic Game Store, but I've not yet bothered, so I can't provide first-hand info.
Windows Explorer still respects the color-scheme preference but the problem is the way it does it.
When you as a dev use a Windows provided control (be it a button, a toolbar, a context menu, etc.) the system grabs the theme information from something called uxtheme. This is how it worked in Windows XP and why you had like 3 different themes you could pick from and switch between at any time, and most apps would respect the selection.
But dark mode doesn't work like that, there's no uxtheme for dark mode. Windows Explorer is given special treatment by Windows with undocumented APIs. Other apps are not so lucky. If they want dark mode, they need to effectively draw the whole UI themselves. Even apps like Notepad++ have to do that these days.
> Windows Explorer is given special treatment by Windows with undocumented APIs.
Microsoft: "We offer GREAT backwards compatibility! The best in the business!"
Also Microsoft: "Man, doing things the old way is so hard. What if we had a clean break with the past?!?!"
Microsoft, some time later: "Man, making a clean break from the past is so hard. Let's just ship what we've done so far and think about finishing up the rest later. What? Windows Explorer is broken, and you refuse to let us ship!? *Fine*, we'll hack something in and not tell anyone."
We also had pseudo-dark mode themes for Windows XP. But the new dark mode stuff in explorer doesn't use uxtheme anymore.