Change background color of Solution Explorer in Visual Studio

Question

Is there any way to change the background color of the Solution Explorer in Visual Studio using a Theme? - or any other way for that matter?

I can change it by changing windows-wide color settings, but obviously that affects too much.

Answer 1

Just created VS extension for that in under an hour, search extension manager for "SExColor". Enjoy ;)

Answer 2

@aloneguid ...should have seen this long time ago.. thank you sir !

@ver (regarding vs 2008 solution for solution;) - a B52 type of approach, carpet bombing on anything that is SysTreeView32 inside a devenv.exe. Possible extra param for desired color, otherwise RGB(220,220,220) - works best for me

#include <windows.h>
#include "psapi.h"
#include "shlwapi.h"
#include "commctrl.h"


COLORREF clr = RGB(220,220,220);

BOOL CALLBACK wenum( HWND hwnd, LPARAM lParam)
{
   const UINT cb = 261;
   static wchar_t    name[] = L"SysTreeView32",
                     tmp[cb] = {0};
   if( ::GetClassNameW( hwnd, tmp, 260 ) && 0 == _wcsicmp( name, tmp ) )
   {
      ::SendMessageW( hwnd, TVM_SETBKCOLOR, 0, (LPARAM)clr );
   }

   return TRUE;
}

BOOL CALLBACK EnumTops(HWND hwnd, LPARAM lParam) 
{
    DWORD             dwThreadId  = 0, 
                     dwProcessId = 0;
    HINSTANCE         hInstance;
   static wchar_t derVS[]     = L"devenv.exe";
   wchar_t  name[_MAX_PATH]   = {0},
            *exe              = 0;

    HANDLE hProcess;
   if (!hwnd)  return TRUE;     // Not a window
   if (!::IsWindowVisible(hwnd)) return TRUE;       // Not visible

   if (!SendMessage(hwnd, WM_GETTEXT, sizeof(name), (LPARAM)name))
      return TRUE;      // No window title
   dwThreadId = GetWindowThreadProcessId(hwnd, &dwProcessId);
   hProcess = OpenProcess(PROCESS_ALL_ACCESS, FALSE, dwProcessId);
   if( !GetModuleFileNameEx(hProcess, 0, name, sizeof(name))) goto exit;

   exe = ::PathFindFileNameW( name );
   if( (void*)exe == (void*)name ) goto exit; // mhm? maybe not exit?

   if( _wcsicmp( derVS, exe ) ) goto exit;

   EnumChildWindows( hwnd, wenum, (LPARAM)hProcess );

exit:
   CloseHandle(hProcess);
   int res = GetLastError();
   return res;
}

int wmain(int argc, wchar_t * argv[]) 
{
   if( argc >= 2 )
   {
      wchar_t *end = 0;
      long l = wcstol( argv[1], &end, 16 );
      clr = (DWORD)l;
   }
   ::EnumWindows(EnumTops, NULL);
   return 0;
}

Answer 3

Not by any means of configuration from Visual Studio itself.

You can however probably "hack" the window object from the Win32 API (look up "window enumeration"). Once you have the window handle, you can set all characterstics you want.

Regards

/Robert

Answer 4

Even changing the standard Windows background color does not work for the Solution Explorer. This Visual Studio bug report mentions the issue. Microsoft has marked this as "Closed -- Won't Fix."

Which is very irritating! Using a dark theme and having a bright white Solution Explorer hanging on the side of the screen is extremely annoying.

One possible solution is to not use the Solution Explorer at all. The Productivity Power Tools provides a Solution Explorer replacement called the "Solution Navigator." It currently is also hard-coded to white. But I think there is probably a better chance of getting the developers of that tool to add support for modifying colors than of getting Microsoft to do it in Visual Studio. (even though Microsoft created the PPTs.)

Answer 5

You could use other extenssion, you have quite big possibilities to do your Visual Studio more good looking ;) (but I'm not sure if there you could change Solution Explorer background)

http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/20cd93a2-c435-4d00-a797-499f16402378