Check out what's new with Curtains
With a special guest appearance by Groupy
Thursday, September 17, 2020 by Tatiora | Discussion: Software Blog
If you love a coordinated and stylish desktop, then you really need to try Curtains.
Taking advantage of the groundwork built to support light and dark mode, Curtains will let you apply new styles along the lines of Dark and Light Modes to Windows® 10. It also includes styles that will let you make Windows look like Windows XP, Windows 95, or other operating systems!
Use the built-in style editor and can create your own Style modes! We just released v1.1 yesterday, adding a big feature: the ability to add blur and transparency effects to your Explorer windows. Certain Curtains styles already come with blur built in - specifically, most of the Fluent styles that you find in the program integrate this feature automatically. In the image below, though, I've taken another style - Cairo Dark - that doesn't have it as the default and changed the option to "Acrylic Blur," which gives the lovely effect you see in the image above.
My favorite thing about Curtains is how perfectly it integrates with Groupy, which you can see in the image above. In order to make them look good together, we made it so that Curtains would automatically select suitable colors anytime you’re using a Style mode without custom Groupy parts. When in dark mode, the tab will remain dark in all apps for the foreground state, and a new “close all” button was added to the far right of the tab.
One of the other new features in v1.1 lets you extend the title bar into the top of the ribbon for Explorer windows. If you love to customize your desktop right down to the smallest detail, then you'll love this feature. Below is an example of an Explorer window with the option turned on (left), and one with it turned off (right).
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Below, you can see how I adjusted the settings on the Cairo Dark style to add the effects I want. I saved a copy so that the original stays unaffected while I tweak the settings on mine to my personal preferences. This gives me an easy way to return to the default if I decide I want to. As you can see, I generally prefer a style that emphasizes more of a Dark Mode feeling - but, if you're a Light Mode kind of person, there's plenty of that in there for you also!
Have you tried Curtains yet? v1.1 is available right now and contains all of the awesome blur and transparency features you see above, along with quality of life improvements and increased style application speed. Give it a try and let us know what you think!
Get Curtains through our store or on Steam.
Don't forget to check out Groupy, too!
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