Native applications of windows 11, such as file explorer and other shell applications, use smooth design elements such as rounded corners and acrylic by default. In addition to rounded corners, another important design feature of windows 11 is the style of materials such as mica, which makes the background color of the application consistent with the desktop.
Mica is similar to acrylic, but it works slightly differently. As Microsoft describes, windows Mica material creates a "color hierarchy" by aligning the background with the application to distinguish multiple open instances of the application, such as file explorer.
Currently, developers cannot enable this new material in their Win32 applications. However, this will change soon. From the 22h2 version, developers can easily enable mica or acrylic style in the container / window of their traditional Win32 applications (i.e. desktop applications). This has been confirmed in a new document issued by the company.
Mica lives in the desktop window manager (DWM). A new windows 11 variable named "dwmu systembackdropu type" will allow developers to specify mica or acrylic materials in their desktop applications. "The flag used to specify the background material drawn by the system of the window, including behind the non client area," wrote the supporting document. According to Microsoft, there are four constants for developers to choose from.
DWMSBT_ Auto: basic behavior. In this constant, the desktop window manager (DWM) will automatically determine the background material for the system drawing of the application window.
DWMSBT_ None: developers can skip mica or acrylic if they have their own custom design of the application window. For example, spotify has its own title. When this value is set, Microsoft will not fill in any system background.
DWMSBT_ MainWindow: apply the background material effect corresponding to the long-term window.
DWMSBT_ Transientwindow: apply the background material effect corresponding to the instantaneous window.
DWMSBT_ Tabbedwindow: applies the background material effect corresponding to the window with the label title bar.
Mica is part of the desktop window manager (DWM), which makes it available to a wide range of applications. In fact, there is a third-party open source tool called "mica for everyone", which uses dwmsetworkattribute and other methods to force mica to be enabled in all applications.
Although this update sounds like good news for everyone, there is still a problem. Microsoft said that this new variable is exclusive to windows 1122h2 (build 22621). In other words, if developers are targeting previous versions of the operating system, they can only use the old material style.