How can I make my active window more obvious on Windows 7 without disabing transparency?

Question

Since I started using Windows 7 I have noticed that I am accidentally typing in the wrong window more often than I used to.

Using the Aero theme, the visual difference between the window with active focus and all other windows is quite subtle. Only the minimise, maximise/restore and close buttons go solid and that leaves just the window border and title bar to signal focus by going slightly darker. When apps are full screen you lose all but the title bar decorations, and if you are using a title bar stealing app like Firefox, you even lose that visual cue.

I have tried playing with the settings on the "Window Color and Appearance" page, but disabling transparency takes away much of the prettiness of the Aero interface. Setting "Color Intensity" to maximum gets some of the way but still doesn't leave the active window that obvious.

The traditional way of doing this, setting the colours of the "Active Title Bar" on the Advanced appearance settings... page no longer work as the aero theme ignores this setting.

So, is there any way to make my active window more obvious on Windows 7 without loosing much of what makes aero pretty?

^{Related to but not quite the same as How to make it blindingly obvious which window is active.}

Answer 1

This is one of those hard problems that many people are facing.

Someone was so troubled with this, that they created a style and hacked a better contrast in it. You can download the style from the Windows 7 Forum in the post Solved - active and inactive windows too similar in Aero.

_{In case the link dies, a copy can be found at the Wayback Machine.}

Answer 2

An AutoHotkey solution for non-maximized windows is described in the article
Script to draw a border around an active window with autohotkey.

The following script is adapted from that article and will draw a 5-pixels red border around the active window :

#Persistent

SetTimer, DrawRect, 50
border_thickness = 5
border_color = FF0000

DrawRect:
WinGetPos, x, y, w, h, A
Gui, +Lastfound +AlwaysOnTop +Toolwindow
iw:= w+4
ih:= h + 4
w:=w+ 8
h:=h + 8
x:= x - border_thickness
y:= y - border_thickness
Gui, Color, FF0000
Gui, -Caption
WinSet, Region, 0-0 %w%-0 %w%-%h% 0-%h% 0-0 %border_thickness%-%border_thickness% %iw%-%border_thickness% %iw%-%ih% %border_thickness%-%ih% %border_thickness%-%border_thickness%
Gui, Show, w%w% h%h% x%x% y%y% NoActivate, Table awaiting Action
return

Answer 3

This is a little update/change from AutoHotkey script above from harrymc answered Apr 8 '14 at 7:17. many thanks for that. I added an exception handler and that windows cant be used maximized:

#Persistent
#SingleInstance,force
SetTimer, DrawRect, 50
border_thickness = 6
border_color = FF0000
DrawRect:
WinGetPos, x, y, w, h, A
WinGet, OutputVar , MinMax, A
; make maximized windows movable
; -1: The window is minimized (WinRestore can unminimize it).
;  1: The window 
; is maximized (WinRestore can unmaximize it).
;0: The window is neither minimized nor maximized.
if(OutputVar == 1){
   WinGetPos,x,y,w,h
   WinRestore,A
   Sleep,500
   WinMove,A,,% x + 3, % y + 3, % A_ScreenWidth - 199, % A_ScreenHeight - 199
 }
Gui, +Lastfound +AlwaysOnTop +Toolwindow
iw:= w+4
ih:= h + 4
w:=w+ 8
h:=h + 8
x:= x - border_thickness
y:= y - border_thickness
Gui, Color, FF0000
Gui, -Caption
WinSet, Region, 0-0 %w%-0 %w%-%h% 0-%h% 0-0 %border_thickness%-%border_thickness% %iw%-%border_thickness% %iw%-%ih% %border_thickness%-%ih% %border_thickness%-%border_thickness%
try{
Gui, Show, w%w% h%h% x%x% y%y% NoActivate, Table awaiting Action
     } catch {
        Sleep,2000
     }
return

To explain the changes: When I closed tabs in google chrome, spread across my 4 monitors, via Control + w, I occasionally closed the wrong ones. Solution searched and found yesterday on this page. After only a few minutes I got an exception when I opened the "Save as" window of notepad ++. This exception is now intercepted via the try, catch block. In addition, I had the problem that I did not see the red frame on maximized windows, and therefore i restore maximized windows inside "if (OutputVar == 1) { ...".

Answer 4

You were in the right place, you just needed to go a little bit deeper.

On the Window Color and Appearance page select Advanced appearance settings.

In the drop-down menu of the new window you have 2 options to make your active window stand out more. Active Title Bar & Active Window Border. You can get pretty detailed on how to make it stand out for you.