How to change line separators in menustrip in visual studio?

Question

I am having a problem witth visual studio. I created a menustrip with different menus and some contain separators. I want the theme of the program to be dark so I changed the color of all buttons to black background and white text. however I cannot change the separators' colors. They are white background and black line. I tried from properties - not working. I tried with code - also not working. Can anyone help me? Also I want to ask how to change the color of the outline of the buttons? it's currently white.

Possible duplicate of [Change the BackColor of the ToolStripSeparator control](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15926377/change-the-backcolor-of-the-toolstripseparator-control) — jegtugado, Oct 25 '18 at 05:45

Rashedul.Rubel · Answer 1 · 2018-10-25T06:34:30.033

The default toolstrip renderer ignores the BackColor property and uses hard-coded colors. so write a custom class as below:

public class CustomToolStripSeparator : ToolStripSeparator
{
    public CustomToolStripSeparator()
    {
        Paint += CustomToolStripSeparator_Paint;
    }

private void CustomToolStripSeparator_Paint(object sender, PaintEventArgs e)
{
    // Get the separator's width and height.
        ToolStripSeparator toolStripSeparator = (ToolStripSeparator)sender;
        int width = toolStripSeparator.Width;
        int height = toolStripSeparator.Height;
        //Color foreColor = Color.Blue;
        Color backColor = Color.Yellow;

        // Fill the background.
        e.Graphics.FillRectangle(new SolidBrush(backColor), 0, 0, width, height);
        // Draw the line.
        //e.Graphics.DrawLine(new Pen(foreColor), 4, height / 2, width - 4, height / 2);
}
}

and inside your form_load method apply your custom toolstripseparator:

private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    ToolStripSeparator toolStripSeparator1 = new CustomToolStripSeparator();
    ToolStripSeparator toolStripSeparator2 = new CustomToolStripSeparator();
    ToolStripSeparator toolStripSeparator3 = new CustomToolStripSeparator();


    this.fileToolStripMenuItem.DropDownItems.Add("Save Project");
    this.fileToolStripMenuItem.DropDownItems.Add(toolStripSeparator1);
    this.fileToolStripMenuItem.DropDownItems.Add("Reload Project");
    this.fileToolStripMenuItem.DropDownItems.Add(toolStripSeparator2);
    this.fileToolStripMenuItem.DropDownItems.Add("Close Project");
    this.fileToolStripMenuItem.DropDownItems.Add(toolStripSeparator3);
    this.fileToolStripMenuItem.DropDownItems.Add("New Window");

}

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 07 '19 at 07:03

There's no need to create a new separator , just create a color table :

   public class MyCustomColors: ProfessionalColorTable
    {

        public override Color SeparatorLight
        {

            get { return Color.FromArgb(100, 100, 100); }

        }


        public override Color SeparatorDark
        {

          get { return Color.FromArgb(100, 100, 100); }

        }


    }
}

then use it like :

 menu_control.Renderer = new ToolStripProfessionalRenderer(new MyCustomColors());

How do I change just the background of the separator, not the actual line color? Thanks :) — Momoro, Feb 05 '21 at 22:49

How to change line separators in menustrip in visual studio?

2 Answers2