Custom Electron Titlebar

This project is a typescript library for electron that allows you to configure a fully customizable title bar. The titlebar is based on the solution from Visual Studio Code and uses some of their code.

This library is for electron 10+, it cannot be used on a basic website or with previous versions of electron.

Install

npm i custom-electron-titlebar

or use example folder to init basic electron project with this titlebar.

Usage

Step 1

In your preload file add:

const customTitlebar = require('custom-electron-titlebar');

window.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', () => {
    new customTitlebar.Titlebar({
        backgroundColor: customTitlebar.Color.fromHex('#ECECEC')
    });

    // ...
})

or, if you are using typescript

import { Titlebar, Color } from 'custom-electron-titlebar'

window.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', () => {
    new Titlebar({
        backgroundColor: Color.fromHex('#ECECEC')
    });

    // ...
})

The parameter backgroundColor: Color is required, this should be Color type. (View Update Background for more details).

Step 2

Update the code that launches browser window

Add the following line to your main.js file:

require('@treverix/remote/main').initialize()

Then configure the browser window like this. We need nodeIntegration and we need to enable the remote module for electron 10+. Further, we assume that the :

var mainWindow = new BrowserWindow({
      width: 1000,
      height: 600,
      frame: false,
      webPreferences: {
          nodeIntegration: true,
          enableRemoteModule: true,
          preload: path.join(__dirname, 'preload.js'),
      }
});

MacOS / Windows

Custom Electron Titlebar is not really useful on MacOS platforms where it only tries to simulate the normal MacOS window design to some extent and it is recommended to exclude the custom titlebar when your application is run on a MacOS platform.

To switch it of for MacOS platforms, you should configure your browser window like so

var mainWindow = new BrowserWindow({
      // ...
      frame: process.platform === 'darwin',
      // ...
});

and similiar on the preload:

window.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', () => {
    if (process.platform !== 'darwin') {
        const customTitlebar = require('custom-electron-titlebar');
        new customTitlebar.Titlebar({
            backgroundColor: customTitlebar.Color.fromHex('#ECECEC')
        });
    }

    // ...
})

Options

The interface [TitleBarOptions] is managed, which has the following configurable options for the title bar. Some parameters are optional.

Methods

Update Background

This change the color of titlebar and it's checked whether the color is light or dark, so that the color of the icons adapts to the background of the title bar.

titlebar.updateBackground(new Color(new RGBA(0, 0, 0, .7)));

To assign colors you can use the following options: Color.fromHex(), new Color(new RGBA(r, g, b, a)), new Color(new HSLA(h, s, l, a)), new Color(new HSVA(h, s, v, a)) or Color.BLUE, Color.RED, etc.

Update Items Background Color

This method change background color on hover of items of menubar.

titlebar.updateItemBGColor(new Color(new RGBA(0, 0, 0, .7)));

To assign colors you can use the following options: Color.fromHex(), new Color(new RGBA(r, g, b, a)), new Color(new HSLA(h, s, l, a)), new Color(new HSVA(h, s, v, a)) or Color.BLUE, Color.RED, etc.

Update Title

This method updated the title of the title bar, If you change the content of the title tag, you should call this method for update the title.

document.title = 'My new title';
titlebar.updateTitle();

// Or you can do as follows and avoid writing document.title
titlebar.updateTitle('New Title');

if this method is called and the title parameter is added, the title of the document is changed to that of the parameter.

Update Icon

With this method you can update the icon. This method receives the url of the image (it is advisable to use transparent image formats)

titlebar.updateIcon('./images/my-icon.svg');

Update Menu

This method updates or creates the menu, to create the menu use remote.Menu and remote.MenuItem.

const menu = new Menu();
menu.append(new MenuItem({
    label: 'Item 1',
    submenu: [
        {
            label: 'Subitem 1',
            click: () => console.log('Click on subitem 1')
        },
        {
            type: 'separator'
        }
    ]
}));

menu.append(new MenuItem({
    label: 'Item 2',
    submenu: [
        {
            label: 'Subitem checkbox',
            type: 'checkbox',
            checked: true
        },
        {
            type: 'separator'
        },
        {
            label: 'Subitem with submenu',
            submenu: [
                {
                    label: 'Submenu &item 1',
                    accelerator: 'Ctrl+T'
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
}));

titlebar.updateMenu(menu);

Update Menu Position

You can change the position of the menu bar. left and bottom are allowed.

titlebar.updateMenuPosition('bottom');

Set Horizontal Alignment

setHorizontalAlignment method was contributed by @MairwunNx :punch:

left, center and right are allowed

titlebar.setHorizontalAlignment('right');

Dispose

This method removes the title bar completely and all recorded events.

titlebar.dispose();

CSS Classes

The following CSS classes exist and can be used to customize the titlebar

Goal

Electron is deprecating the remote module. It is deactivated by default and will be removed with electron 12 in the near future. The great custom-electron-titlebar by AlexTorresSk has been archived recently and is not maintained anymore. This fork is a version for electron 10+ and uses the new userland implementation of the remote module @treverix/remote.

Contributing

Many thanks to all the people who supported Alex' project through issues and pull request. If you want to contribute with this electron 10 fork, all the issues and pull request are welcome.

You can also buy us a coffee:

Andreas (Treverix)	Alex

License

This fork of the archived custom-electron-titlebar project by AlexTorresSk is under the MIT license.

It uses Code from the Visual Studio Code Project which is also under the MIT license.