This utility returns the complete glass effect into windows frames.

Glass look

Your windows will be rendered with transparent borders. This look allows you to see what is behind the border. The key element is the blurring of content behind the glass borders to prevent it from being too clear and disturbing. The result is very smart window border.

Fully native

The utility is completely integrated into Desktop Window Manager without breaking any system protection or modifying system files. All rendering is done via native Direct3D device. Any colorization settings adjusted in Windows Control Panels are respected. Use color intensity slider to adjust the amount of the transparency.

No custom skinning engine used. Due to the native nature of this utility your Windows theme is composited together with the glass effect. All features controlled through DWM API (e.g. DwmEnableBlurBehindWindow or DwmExtendFrameIntoClientArea) are supported including the taskbar or custom Start menu blur effect.

Low resources usage

This library tries to utilize all DWM resources as much as possible to minimize RAM and VRAM usage. No redudant objects are created, no background service is running. The result is light-weight library which behaves exactly in the same way as Aero Glass in Windows 7 did. No performance degradation.

Theme your windows

You can change the look of your windows borders completely without touching your Windows theme or using unsigned theme. This allows you to bring back several effects such as window shadow, caption glow effect, rounded borders or simply change the appearence of caption buttons. You just modify single bitmap in your favourite image editor and everything will look as you want.

Features:

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  • TOPlist
  • Apply glass look to windows borders
  • Blur the content behind the borders to improve UI experience
  • Change amount of transparency in Control panels directly
  • Change inactive windows borders color
  • Skin windows borders (add glow, shadows etc.) without changing Windows theme
  • Fully native including MSStyle themes and DWM API compatibility
  • Low resources usage

What's New:

  • Version for Windows 8.1 updated from 1.2.1 to 1.2.5
  • hardcoded symbol patterns for Win8.1 Spring2014 update
  • some minor fixes
  • added setup option to adjust access permissions for those who don't know how to set them on their own.
  • internal changes to be consistent with Aero Glass for Win8.1 code
  • fixes to allow on-the-fly preview from prepared GUI application
  • CustomThemeResource settings name changed to CustomThemeAtlas
  • inactive frame blur/color balances are not altered by theme opacity settings when user set them manually
  • blur deviation settings is applied everytime colorization is changed (so no DWM restart is needed now)
  • custom theme resource can now be loaded globally from HKEYLOCALMACHINE
  • glass is disabled when running on a battery --> HKEYLOCALMACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\DWM:DisableGlassOnBattery (DWORD 0x0 / 0x1 = default)
  • implemented glass reflection (aero stripes only) --> HKEYCURRENTUSER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\DWM:ColorizationGlassReflectionIntensity (DWORD 0x0 = disabled (default) / other values = enabled)