Unity Dark Mode Top Bar

The top bar on the Unity editor is pretty unsightly, especially considering when run in dark mode with other applications also in dark mode on multiple displays. It stick out like a bright sore thumb.

From a companion program Visual Studio, I've made some mock ups of what I hope the future Unity editor can look like with the dark theme. While Unity is revisiting the UI, I hope they can take this oversight of darkness into account

Before:



After, and Deliciously Dark:



PS: To Unity... it'd be nice to take a note from Microsoft's documentation that has a "Dark Theme" support on all their pages, and allow the Unity docs to be dark officially, without having to hack around with a CSS override.


What do you guys think?

 

I would love to be able to hide the top bar and the toolbar altogether. It eats up lot of screen space and all these items can be linked to hotkeys anyway.

As far as UI goes, the best example out there is photoshop. You can completely customize every single feature. This is the gold standard Unity should look at -- at least as far as UI goes. Maya also has a great UI. Again, you can disable every single element from it and have a totally blank viewport. THen quickly access whatever menu/tool you need with contextual marking menus. Very fast, very clean, and all attention is on the viewport where it should be.

It is especially problematic for artist to evaluate lighting and coloring if you have strong contrast anywhere else on the screen. Even in playmode we are stuck with this top bar, so how can we evaluate the end-product precisely as the end user will? That's no good. We shouldn't need to build every time we want to evaluate some small artistic change.

Probably some programmers might scoff at things like this. But the more options and tools the artist/level designers got, the better looking games you are going to see coming from unity. THe faster, easier, and more accurately they can iterate and experiment, the more chance you get to hit home with awesome art. And that means more money to potentially earn. And who doesn't want more money?

Unreal is still a little better, but 2019 has made some nice improvements. It is nice to see little QOL stuff like this come into the radar. At least for me, an artist who does most work in editor, every little 0.5% speed boost adds up towards much more work enjoyed and greater productivity.


(I voted yes by the way. Greater user control is always plus in my book)

 

My topbar is the color I selected for the OS(windows), same as all other topbars for all other programs.
why not change that to a darker shade?

not to say I'd mind having control over it from unity. +1 to getting rid of it (@BIGTIMEMASTER just have it pop down when you put the cursor against the top, no need to put extra shortcuts in)

 

I can't disagree with this. If you are going to go with that horrible looking dark theme, it makes sense to go dark for everything.

 

What's this? Can you elaborate?

 

Exactly. Where is the night time sky in the default scene? A bright blue sky is clearly the worst.

 

I know Unity is terrible with UI design in general, but I thought this thread is a joke for dark theme design, when I noticed bright top bar above dark "rest". Never really took notice on other threads, discussing dark theme.

But I just searched online images and the bright bar is there indeed.
Form design point of view, yes top bar should be consistent with rest of theme.

Yep, I did pointed out while ago similar, once or twice. Like making bright game, using dark editors.

However, people claim for eyes disorders and whats not, yet fight over making everything dark. Yet having OS in bright theme?

So who is fooling who really?

It means, than when you move mouse to the top edge of the screen, the whole bar shows up. Just like menu starts, when clicking on the option. Then when moving mouse away, the bar hides itself. Then shortcuts are just optional preferences of the user.

 

Welcome to the dark side . . .

 

Nevermind, I thought what you meant in the first sentence was just about the topbar, not the unity toolbar too.

 

How do you make the top bar hide though?

 

I don't think you can? Don't think even it is necessary, since you can unpin and drag individual windows / tabs.
Then you make full screen if you like, with almost no bar on top. Or / And move to another monitor, if having one.

 

This entire thing here ^^^

Would be nice to remove. All the tools can be reached with hotkeys. As for menus, let the bar minimize by pressing shift+m or something. It uses lots of screen space for something you only need to access occassionally.

I am still not understanding what @SparrowsNest was talking about. I can't find a way to make unity enter fullscreen mode (f11) like other programs.

 

@BIGTIMEMASTER, this is screenshot of full screen, no image cropping, nor editing. I just dragged tabs away from main editor.

 

that works!

too simple i never would have thought of it

 

I can't agree more, and like that Photoshop and other programs have an option to eliminate more and more of the UI, in the case of Photoshop by pressing a simple hotkey F. This makes it easy to switch to modes where you want the screen real estate. This matters, and I hope Unity is listening.

 

@SparrowsNest I'm running Win 10 in Dark mode, but this is still how it appears.

If I go to Settings > Colors and all the way at the bottom select "Title Bars and Windows Borders" then the top strip of Unity changes to that color, but the menu bar stays white.

Also, I don't want to have to change that color. I use that Windows color to highlight menus and things, so want it to be bright/high contrast.... Which is exactly what I don't want for a title bar, which should not draw pointless attention. (The whole purpose of the original post)

 

Also, for you guys looking to dark out the forums and documentation, without a plugin:

On the new Edge Chromium or Google Chrome:

edge://flags/#enable-force-dark
chrome://flags/#enable-force-dark

Both browsers have easy support for profiles, so if you don't want everything to be dark, you can have a profile for browsing resources in dark mode easily.

 

Quick tip, get fancy Zones from PowerToys and make a layout for Unity, then you can dock all single windows in there and get rid of Unity's own window
https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/blob/master/src/modules/fancyzones/README.md

 

That's really cool, thanks!!

 

This is still relevant.

Currently, Unity's top bar isn't changed accordingly to the dark theme. It's bright like a flashlight.
It would be good to get it fixed.

 

Signal boosting this. Unity is one of the last programs I have that hasn't adpoted Windows 10's dark mode, and it's the main program I use. I mostly use Mac and on MacOS it has incpororated Dark Mode fully, but when I'm on my Windows laptop I get this unsightly white block at the top, even in the 2020 beta. That's not good!

 

Another tip is to use Auto Hotkey to resize the Unity window so that the title bar is outside the top of the screen. I've included my .ahk script below which resizes the window you click so that the title bar is outside the top and the bottom of the window covers the taskbar for full focus mode. The menu bar is still blinding white unfortunately.

Keep in mind that the script is tuned for my specific resolution (2560x1440), it might need tweaking with other resolutions.

Code (AHK):

1. ;- Maximize window with Win key + left mouse button
2. LWIN & LButton::
3.     WinSet, Style, -0xC00000, A
4.     WinMove,A,,-8,-8,A_ScreenWidth+14,A_ScreenHeight+14
5.     return
6. ;
7.  
8. ;+ Restore window with Win key + right mouse button
9. LWIN & RButton::
10.     WinSet, Style, +0xC00000, A
11.     return
12. ;
13.  

This stuff helps a bit, but the Unity app really needs to let Windows know that it supports dark mode!

 

wow thanks buddy really helped me here



btw do you know how to remove that disgusting file menu bar?

 

you can make the top of the window dark if you go to windows personalisation

 

I know what you're talking about and it doesn't work for unity.

 

Using Stardock Curtains (windows)...almost fixes it
*not checked Windowblinds...

I'm going to check into it more, cause it's something you can't unsee after you notice.
I'd like to either color menu bar, or have it show when you press ALT like other windows....

 

damn you, now I can't unsee that goddamn led strip, lol.

 

Let us make our own editor themes?

Unity free dark mode is available in the latest versions, and Unity can make money by allowing themes to be sold on the Asset Store.

 

I've just noticed this and can't unsee. Thats such a horrible thing noone in Unity cares about this.

 

Unity cares about it: https://forum.unity.com/threads/dark-mode-menu-bar.746315/

 

Settings > Personalization > Colors > Under 'Show accent color on the following surfaces', put a check on Title bars and window borders

 

Which 'settings' option are you referring to in the editor??
There is no 'Personalisation' option in the Preferences or Project Settings window.

 

He's talking about Windows 10 settings.

 

But was it really that necessary to bump a one year old thread with a solution already provided?

 

IDK, I find the whole dark mode, dark theme talk superficial BS, so I have no argument if anyone wants to close/delete/eradicate all dark mode-related threads.

 

That's not a solution.

 

Still no solution ? :C I hate the white file bar

 

Fix this UNITY !

 

Please fix

 

They should fix this, Since windows 11 now addid new DWMWA_USE_IMMERSIVE_DARK_MODE for tittle bar but it only work in windows 11 only. acording to this forum
https://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtopic.php?t=78732

 

Turns out "This has been the intended design for years".
Unity Issue Tracker - The title and menu bar are white when Editor Theme is set to Dark (unity3d.com)

 

Here's C# script to hide it: https://twitter.com/kamyker/status/1606439878002098177

 

Great! At Least it was we can do for now.
Its a shame that most used game engine in the world refused to fix this. While recently Blender which is an Open-Source application can make a native Windows Tittle bar in dark mode.
(Top is unity, Botom is blender)

 

How has no one mentioned the context menu when you right click? I is also blinding white. I realize i am new to this, but i installed Unity 2022 told it to use windows theme, and immediatly noticed the menu bar (Firl, Edite, View...) and the right click context menu. Its great that you can hide the menu bar, and use hotkeys, or whatever, but that context menu is really what kills me. I have RP, a vision issue, that means i cant hardly read small black text on white background, white on black is much easier and less painful, litterally. I can use windows magnifier to invert the screen colors, but the context menu disappears when i start the hotkey (Windows key) and then have to find where to reclick again on the inverted colors. This is an accessability issue for me and if there is a solution i have missed, please tell me and i would be ever grateful.

 

Now that you mentioned that unity context menu, i heard they use win32 context menu. so, maybe you can use some dark theme from devian art named BIB 3 by niivu. Thats all what we can do, alteast for now. But, since to achive this we use something like External theme changer use it with cautions. because maybe it will tweak and messup the windows registry.

But yeah, this theme will make all win32 become consistent dark mode between all windows app. Last time i use it in windows 11 22h1 its work great.

Anyway for the tutorial link, you can watch this youtube video:

I hope this will help anyone who want to get full dark mode in unity.

 

"By design"... what a joke. This is a real accessibility issue and could be easily solved.

Luckily this works great, it will do for now, but right click menus are still an issue.

 

As someone who just moved to a C2 oled

As someone who just moved to a C2 OLED, thank you. And UT, please make this a priority!

 

Here is a solution:

Only do the guide until 2:07 mark (make the patch, restart and copy paste the themes and select one). Makes other apps dark mode too.

 

Always thought it was one of the extensions messing up with the theme.
But "By design"?! WTF
Yes, why, I love paying 2k USD a seat for a software that can't implement a working dark theme.

 

Ok, I finally figured out a way to make both the tittle bar and menu bar dark without modifying Windows itself. And this applies to context menu as well as the sub-windows:



You just need to write a DLL to inject into Unity.exe process and sub-class the "UnityContainerWndClass" to overwrite the drawing of the Win32 components like the menu bar and context menu. As well for the title bar, you just need to call the DwmSetWindowAttribute Win32 API with DWMWA_USE_IMMERSIVE_DARK_MODE set to true.

I can open source the code if anyone is interested.