ColorShifter dynamically changes the Windows 7/8 theme colors by tapping into an undocumented API.

Gif demonstration here: http://www.gfycat.com/EqualMeagerAnglerfish

##Download it here

##Not working?

If you have your theme set to very transparent, ColorShifter's changes will not be too visible. Try the following:

• Press "Stop and quit" on ColorShifter
• Right click on your Desktop, select Personalize
• Click "Color" on the bottom, move the color intensity slider to the right
• You can also uncheck "transparency" if you're using Windows 7
• Start ColorShifter

This works because ColorShifter takes the color intensity and transparency settings from what you set in "Personalize".

Alternatively, check the "Override balance" checkbox in ColorShifter and increase the value to about 80-100. This manually sets the color intensity settings.

##Usage

The main interface is split into three sections:

• Settings
• Palettes
• Colors

The settings group contains the following options:

Using the palette table you can rename palettes (double-click on the name) or drag and drop them around. There are also several buttons:

Using the color group you can manually set the hex value of the color (double-click on the value) or drag and drop them around.

• About displays some brief information about the program and its author
• Help displays this text
• Stop and quit stops shifting and exits the application
• Start with Windows controls whether or not the application will automatically run when you log into Windows.
• Shift the colors! starts shifting the Windows theme colors according to the selected palette. You need to select a palette before this button becomes available. Click again to stop.

When the application is loaded, it will display an icon in the system tray. Pressing "X" on the main application window will not close the application. Use "Stop and quit" instead.

Double-clicking on the icon will minimize the main application if it's maximized and maximize it if it's minimized. Middle-clicking on the icon will start/stop shifting the colors. Right clicking the application will bring up a menu where you can minimize, restore, start/stop shifting the colors as well as close the application.

• Pressing "preview" on a palette with "shift colors in random order" checked will stop after a random amount of time instead of a single cycle.
• Manually typing in the hex code for a color while the HSV radio button is selected may result in small changes to the inputted value.
• Setting smoothness too high, cycle time too low and adding too many colors at the same time might slow down your system.

I only know how to do this in C++. First, declare your function pointers and load the dwmapi DLL. This is Windows black magic and I won't even pretend to know what's going on here.

hlib = LoadLibrary("dwmapi.dll"); // load the Window Manager API

if (!hlib) {
        std::cerr << "Could not load dwmapi.dll" << std::endl;
        return -1;
}

*(FARPROC *)&DwmGetColorizationParameters = GetProcAddress(hlib, (LPCSTR)127);
*(FARPROC *)&DwmSetColorizationParameters = GetProcAddress(hlib, (LPCSTR)131);

You then need the DwmColorizationParameters struct that will get passed to the functions:

typedef struct { // DwmColorizationParameters
        int color;
        int afterglow;
        int colorBalance;
        int afterglowBalance;
        int blurBalance;
        int glassReflectionIntensity;
        int opaqueBlend;
} DwmColorizationParameters;

The color field is an 4-byte integer containing the alpha, red, green, and blue components (0xAARRGGBB). The colorBalance field is an integer setting some sort of saturation for the colors, between 0 and 127. I'm not really sure what the others do. They don't seem to have an effect on Windows 8, and on Windows 7 I think they control the intensity/opacity of different glass efects.

Now you can use the functions.

DwmColorizationParameters myColor; // declare the struct that we'll be using
DwmGetColorizationParameters(&myColor); // myColor now contains the current values of the Windows interface

myColor.color = 0xFF00FF00; // Alpha: 255, Red: 0, Green: 255, Blue: 0

DwmSetColorizationParameters(&myColor, 0); // I don't know what the 0 does but you need it

By knowing this basic implementation you can do all sorts of things with the Windows theme colors. I'm not sure why Microsoft chose to leave these functions undocumented; I think they're pretty neat.

One other thing: I can't take the credit for finding out how to fish into the Window Manager DLL. I realized it was possible when I was playing with the display settings and the theme color changed instantly -- surely there must be a mechanism with which to do that. After hours of intense searching, I managed to string together a few incomplete tutorials to make it work. If you were the first person to figure it out, let me know and I'll credit you and link to your tutorial/website.