Classic Explorer status bar is light gray on Windows 10 1809 dark mode (Classic Explorer status bar and toolbar don't change to dark mode in Windows 10)

[amartini]

I'm using dark mode and everything seems right except for the status bar.

[MilesFarber]

You know i wouldn't mind the fact that this issue is still present if it wasn't for the fact that YOU CANNOT DISABLE THE STATUS BAR. WHO THE F---- NEEDS TWO F------- STATUS BARS?????

you know, who scream and have a behave like an douchebag, have rarely right ...

and the best, any laugh about ;) because the moderator have the right, your posting to delete ;)

Explain the need for two status bars then. Without broken English, if possible.

[jabcreations]

It is possible to use either the Classic Explorer status bar or the built in Windows Explorer status bar.

1. Go to the Settings for Classic Explorer.
2. Click on "Status Bar" tab.
3. Check or uncheck "Show status bar".
4. Click "Ok".
5. Open a new instance of Windows Explorer.

I'm using WindowBlinds so I'm not sure if the remaining status bar will have an issue so you can alternatively use the built in status bar if you want:

1. Click the "View" menu in Windows Explorer.
2. Click on the "Options" button.
3. In the Folder Options modal click on the "View" tab.
4. Scroll about two-thirds the length of the scrollbar.
5. Check or uncheck "Show status bar".

[blackcrack]

Hi @jedikalimero

Still not a fix for this issue? Also, someone should change the topic to something like: "Classic Explorer status bar and toolbar don't change to dark mode in Windows 10"

i bet it's setted up a wrong darkmode color in "#color" in the CShell code, instead should use a variable of WinNT with (a.e.)"%Nightshapecolor%" who is political more correctly and use it directly from the System-"color" come nuances can only arise if as shortshoot be use a hardcode color be use, because, if in the System change some color nuances arises then and this could be the result ..

if i be in able to presume that... in this case .. now is the question , exist some variable for the system ? if yes, then why not use this variable .. and make directly the possible for change manually out an other color with a Textbox for css5(or higher) colors and add directly the support for actual css colors who is included transparency with the last 2 digits at 8 digits ( or how long is the actual css color digits ? 8 or more digits ? ) the actual html/css code support could be directly updated in OpenShell... imho

[EvocativeOlash]

You know i wouldn't mind the fact that this issue is still present if it wasn't for the fact that YOU CANNOT DISABLE THE STATUS BAR. WHO THE F---- NEEDS TWO F------- STATUS BARS?????

you know, who scream and have a behave like an douchebag, have rarely right ... and the best, any laugh about ;) because the moderator have the right, your posting to delete ;)

Explain the need for two status bars then. Without broken English, if possible.

Default status bar is horribly broken missing (free space), which is one of the major reason many of us installed this in the first place. It was a built in feature in previous versions of windows removed for no discernable reason. Their replacement of forcing you to navigate to and look at the drive tiles is just a waste of time.

[blackcrack]

@codec @ge0rdi

[ppvnf]

It is possible to use either the Classic Explorer status bar or the built in Windows Explorer status bar.

1. Go to the Settings for Classic Explorer.

2. Click on "Status Bar" tab.

3. Check or uncheck "Show status bar".

4. Click "Ok".

5. Open a new instance of Windows Explorer.

I'm confused. Do I need to download Classic Explorer instead of Open-Shell-Menu? I am not finding those options. Thanks. I just want to disable the useless white bar that Open-Shell-Menu created.

Edit: never mind, just search Classic Explorer settings in start menu and you will be able to disable it. Thanks!

[ldx00]

Shout out to @Turk303 above! I've now basically got at least something vaguely acceptable!

TL:DR - You can change the colour of the toolbar to a fixed colour using QTTabBar, but not the status bar. If you make it too dark then the menu items become unreadable.

Here's the useful post from @Turk303 ! https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu/issues/121#issuecomment-610178296

I installed QTTabBar from here http://qttabbar.wikidot.com/

This almost got me what I wanted but the colour was off. Going into the QTTabBar Options > Appearance in the Nav bar on the left > then to the Toolbar tab on the top > then to Toolbar background color... allowed me to choose any colour I wanted for the QTTabBar and this was automatically applied to all the toolbars, including of course the Classic Explorer one!

And here is how it looks!

Issues (some quite big possibly...)

• You can't change the font colour of the menu text, so it's very hard to read the menu items on the left, but I know what they are, so I don't really care
• The status bar is sadly not fixed
• You need to keep at least one of the toolbars enabled, otherwise the toolbar reverts to white again. Thankfully there is basically an invisible one (QT Base Toolbar) that you can see in the second screenshot above, that if you enable, will keep the toolbar colour from reverting to white
• There are lots of random options and explorer enhancements that QTTabBar adds, you need to go through the options and disable what you don't want. There does actually seem to be some good stuff there though that some might find useful
• Sometimes the menu items on the left are gone altogether and all my icons are on the left. I did see this occasionally in the past, but during my playing around it happened a lot more often. I'm hoping that after a restart it'll stabilise, let's see!
• This colour is fixed so if you switch between light and dark mode, maybe by time of day for example, then you will have to keep going in and changing the colour manually. I stick with dark mode permanently so it's not an issue for me.

For now at least this workaround is good enough for me. If anyone manages to find out how to change the font colour, please let me know, then it'll be almost perfect (apart from the fact this isn't a proper fix).

A couple more points

• I thought I might be able to find some kind of registry edit when I changed the colour, but no such luck, at least nothing showed up with regshot that is very useful for doing a before and after comparison on your registry https://github.com/Seabreg/Regshot
• I think from my digging that the colour of the toolbar is coming from a legacy theme setting somewhere, as people seem to have had some luck when they find a custom theme that uses a darker colour for "something". I say something here because it may not be the toolbar colour, just some colour in the theme and standard themes seem to use white here. The fact that someone else, when upgrading a few PCs managed to get different colours there seems to indicate this is not hardcoded somewhere, but is being picked up from the colour of something else. I suspect that the newer OSs like 10 and 11 don't specify that colour any more, and dark mode colours are again defined differently so there is no native way in these OSs to modify that colour. Good luck to the devs in finding this!

Big thanks to @Turk303 again for his useful post! I'd almost given up!

Other related bugs

335 #361 #681 #772 #827

[pbakes]

Can confirm this is a issue. Dark mode selected in Windows 10 and the Classic Explorer bars don't match Dark Mode.

EDIT:

Has anyone found a fix for this?

[pbakes]

Nevermind, this is the answer

[duyvuxx]

SOLVE

• step 1:

• step 2:

And the status bar duplicated now gone!!