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How to reduce title bar height and size of window buttons in Windows 10
Many users are not happy with the default appearance of window title bars in Windows 10. It is too tall and the window caption buttons (minimize, maximize, close) are quite large. If you want to reduce the title bar height and make window buttons smaller in Windows 10, here is how you can do it.
There are two ways to do it. To reduce the title bar height and make window buttons smaller in Windows 10, do the following:
Option one. Adjust window title bars appearance using Winaero Tweaker
In version 0.3.1, I added the appropriate option to Winaero Tweaker. Run it and go to Advanced appearance — Window Title Bars.
Here, set the desired height of the title bar. Use the track bar slider to adjust it:
It will also reduce window button size, so nothing else is required.
If you cannot reduce the title bar to the desired size like 15 or 16 px, you need to reduce the title bar font. Change it from Segoe UI, 9px to Segoe UI, 8px. This will resolve the issue.
Also, if you prefer huge title bars, it is a good idea to increase the title bar font.
Tip: If you set the font size of the title bar to some big value which is greater than the current title bar height, Windows will adjust the title bar height automatically for you.
All the changes you make in Winaero Tweaker will be applied instantly. No reboot is required.
Option two. Adjust window title bars appearance with a Registry tweak
It is possible to adjust window title bar height using Windows Registry Editor. This method is less effective than Winaero Tweaker and will not allow you to adjust fonts, but it is worth mentioning it for those who like tinkering with the system themselves.
- Open Registry Editor. If you are not familiar with Registry Editor, see this detailed tutorial.
- Go to the following Registry key:
Tip: You can access any desired Registry key with one click.
Change the string value named «CaptionHeight». Set its value using the following formula:
For example, to set the title bar height to 18px, set the CaptionHeight value to
That’s it. Note that if you edit the Registry manually, the changes are not instant. Also, you cannot tweak or change the title bar font, e.g. to reduce it and bypass the title bar height limit caused by the font size. The title bar font is stored as a byte array in the Registry. So, I recommend you to use Winaero Tweaker.
This trick also works in Windows 8 and Windows 8.1.
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About Sergey Tkachenko
Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer from Russia who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.
31 thoughts on “ How to reduce title bar height and size of window buttons in Windows 10 ”
‘winareo tweaker’ freezes/hangs/stops responding after i adjust the window title bar height to ’15’ and click on ‘apply’ button. i will try the registry trick to see if it works or not.
Well, try to close all apps/windows and try again with Tweaker, it should work then.
I found the app that causes ‘winaero tweaker’ to hang when applying ‘window title bar height’ changes. It’s due to ‘System Explorer 6.4.3.5352.’ If I exit that app, ‘winaero tweaker’ won’t hang!
I went with height size ’18.’ At ’15,’ the ‘quick launch’ and ‘system tray’ icons were too small! 🙂
Great.
I am using 17.
The registry trick seems to work except for the formula. I follow your formula to (change the size to ’15’):
I use ‘-225’ and reboot. If I open up ‘winareo tweaker,’ the slider shows ’17’ instead of ’15.’ Do you know why? Is ’17’ the lowest value windows will accept so anything lower it bumps it to ’17’?
Because FONTS are too big
And windows cannot set it lower than 17.
That’s it.
Set a smaller caption font and you will see yourself.
it seems decreasing the ‘title bar’ height also decreases the size of the both ‘system tray’ and ‘quick launch’ icons too! 🙁
Yep it is the same here.
I’m finding that the changes don’t persist past a login/logout or reboot. Well not fully. If I set the title height to 23, it reverts to 28 after I come back into Windows. The font size is set to 9 btw.
If I go into winaero, I can set it back to 23 and apply, and it takes. And it stays that way until I restart Windows or come back in.
Sorry, forgot to mention that even the scroll bars act randomly as well…
More troubleshooting… it appears that is due to using a 125% scaling option (since I have a 4K monitor). Setting to 100% scaling works fine, but the icons and elements are too small. Any ideas?
I suspect Windows somehow re-calculates metrics by its own.
Can you tell me which theme you are using?
The default one?
Same issue. I’m using 4K monitor with ‘175%’ dpi
After some winaero tweaking, on each restart, i got doubled height on title bar and doubled width on scrollbars. So after 3-4 restarts i got extremelly huge titlebars 😀
I fixed it by manually editing reg keys (restored to defaults).
I suppose you can reproduce it on any monitor, just increase system dpi to 150-200%
Indeed the default… consider it a virgin system with only these changes. As with Nik below, the system does seem to increase the size of the scrollbar for example. I’m with you, somehow the system tries to recalculate metrics, but why only with scaling?
Here are values that worked in my case (no recalculation on each restart)
I entered it manually in the register
“IconTitleWrap”=”1”
“Shell Icon Size”=”32”
“BorderWidth”=”-15″
“CaptionHeight”=”-270″
“CaptionWidth”=”-270″
“MenuHeight”=”-288″
“MenuWidth”=”-288″
“ScrollHeight”=”-240″
“ScrollWidth”=”-240″
“SmCaptionHeight”=”-270″
“SmCaptionWidth”=”-270″
“AppliedDPI”=dword:000000a8 // this one means 175%
“PaddedBorderWidth”=”-60″
“IconSpacing”=”-1125″
“IconVerticalSpacing”=”-1125″
“MinAnimate”=”0”
Is there any way to reduce title bar height without reducing sizes of tray icons?
It seems that when I just reduced the title bar height with winaero tweaker sizes of tray icons do not change. It is after when I restart explorer.exe that they get smaller.
Thank you!
It is not possible. Since even Windows 95, the titlebar size affects tray icons.
There is also one glitch with this.
In the navigation pane of file explorer, there are “>” marks at left side of each icons representing folders, and this appears only when you hover your mouse cursor around it.
I have reduced the font of the titlebar and reduced the height of the titlebar, and this makes those “>” marks somewhat smaller too.
What happens is, when “>” mark appears as you hover mouse cursor on it, there is an animation, and at the first phase of that animation, “>” appears as the reduced size, and then it get back to its original size at next phase. This is kind of annoying.
I hope there is a fix for this, i.e. reducing font size of titlebars without affecting those “>”s in the file explorer.
Thanks.
What about universal apps? Is it possible to decrease the size of the caption buttons of the uni apps? Or the settings app?
It looks like it is not possible.
How does one change the height of the taskbar? I’d like to make it a little smaller than the minimum that WIndows 10 allows. Thanks!
Ty for this , lifesaver!
What is this “script” drop-down menu that I’m seeing in the “Change font” menu? Looks like it’s in all the places this menu appears. I’m intrigued! =D
This is a text box which demonstrates how changes will look. I used the Segoe Script font.
Still so much wasted space, though!
I’ve set them to 16 but they’re clearly more than 16 pixel in height. And at the same time, the tray icons shrink too and there’s like 50% wasted height on the taskbar. Why can’t they just be separate settings: one for the title bars, one for the font, one for the program’s icon on the title bar, one for the tasktray icons, one for the taskbar icons, one for the taskbar height too. It’s not THAT diffcult to program, all it needs is some more flexibility and unification (inb4 people accusing me of underestimating the efforts involved with such things, and mind you that I studied IT & analytic processing at uni for 5 semesters around 2001).
22 YEARS and they can’t bother to implement separate setting for those UI elements, says a lot about their opinion of the average user’s ability to make simple decisions. With all the supposed customisability they add with every update, this couldn’t be a part of one of them? Ridiculous, really.. They have literally hundreds of people working on their tech and their programs, but apparently not the right people to manage their QA. (Microsoft does have QA alright, but their decision-makers don’t really know what the users want.)
The whole Windows GUI is so damn.. RIGID, and it’s become worse with W10, it practically forces some people to look for alternative methods to either adapt these things to their liking or shove off. (Personally, I use Windows mostly for video games. But not every Windows user is an “apps” & video games fetishist, some are just forced to get along with it for work-related situations. Also, Linux needs barely less tweaking but at least it CAN be tweaked to almost any extent.)
That’s it. Sorry for ranting.
There is a problem on new windows 10 after update. When I restart the system not work, but if I logoff and logon again, it’s working. The settings not change, but not working before logoff and logon. Any idea?
Hi, I still can’t adjust the font of the title bars as of the last Windows 10 update.
Have tried repeatedly and still nothing.
It all appeared to work fine prior to that update.
…..ps, I could’ve sworn I posted this same question previously but lost the url to this page…or whatever page is similar to this. Anyhow, please help…I’m going blind! 🙁
That’s cool but what is the default in the registry? I almost broke my pc using the program and the borders are now very small.
I updated many Win 7 computers to Win 10 in the last few days.
Most everything works but the title bars of windows minimized to the desktop no longer show the window title except for the application icon.
I installed Winareo Tweaker to change title bar parameters but it did not help. There does not seem to be a registry setting to control minimized title bar parameters.
Have you found any information about this?
Title bar customization
When your app is running in a desktop window, you can customize the title bars to match the personality of your app. The title bar customization APIs let you specify colors for title bar elements, or extend your app content into the title bar area and take full control of it.
How much to customize the title bar
There are two levels of customization that you can apply to the title bar.
For simple color customization, you can set ApplicationViewTitleBar properties to specify the colors you want to use for title bar elements. In this case, the system retains responsibility for all other aspects of the title bar, such as drawing the app title and defining draggable areas.
Your other option is to hide the default title bar and replace it with your own XAML content. For example, you can place text, buttons, or custom menus in the title bar area. You will also need to use this option to extend an acrylic background into the title bar area.
When you opt for full customization, you are responsible for putting content in the title bar area, and you can define your own draggable region. The system Back, Close, Minimize, and Maximize buttons are still available and handled by the system, but elements like the app title are not. You will need to create those elements yourself as needed by your app.
Simple color customization is available to Windows apps using XAML, DirectX, and HTML. Full customization is available only to Windows apps using XAML.
Simple color customization
If you want only to customize the title bar colors and not do anything too fancy (such as putting tabs in your title bar), you can set the color properties on the ApplicationViewTitleBar for your app window.
This example shows how to get an instance of ApplicationViewTitleBar and set its color properties.
This code can be placed in your app’s OnLaunched method (App.xaml.cs), after the call to Window.Activate, or in your app’s first page.
The Windows Community Toolkit provides extensions that let you set these color properties in XAML. For more info, see the Windows Community Toolkit documentation.
There are a few things to be aware of when setting title bar colors:
- The button background color is not applied to the close button hover and pressed states. The close button always uses the system-defined color for those states.
- The button color properties are applied to the system back button when it’s used. (See Navigation history and backwards navigation.)
- Setting a color property to null resets it to the default system color.
- You can’t set transparent colors. The color’s alpha channel is ignored.
Windows gives a user the option to apply their selected accent color to the title bar. If you set any title bar color, we recommend that you explicitly set all the colors. This ensures that there are no unintended color combinations that occur because of user defined color settings.
Full customization
When you opt-in to full title bar customization, your app’s client area is extended to cover the entire window, including the title bar area. You are responsible for drawing and input-handling for the entire window except the caption buttons, which are overlaid on top of the app’s canvas.
To hide the default title bar and extend your content into the title bar area, set the CoreApplicationViewTitleBar.ExtendViewIntoTitleBar property to true.
This example shows how to get the CoreApplicationViewTitleBar and set the ExtendViewIntoTitleBar property to true. This can be done in your app’s OnLaunched method (App.xaml.cs), or in your app’s first page.
This setting persists when your app is closed and restarted. In Visual Studio, if you set ExtendViewIntoTitleBar to true, and then want to revert to the default, you should explicitly set it to false and run your app to overwrite the persisted setting.
Draggable regions
The draggable region of the title bar defines where the user can click and drag to move the window around (as opposed to simply dragging content within the app’s canvas). You specify the draggable region by calling the Window.SetTitleBar method and passing in a UIElement that defines the draggable region. (The UIElement is often a panel that contains other elements.)
Here’s how to set a Grid of content as the draggable title bar region. This code goes in the XAML and code-behind for your app’s first page. See the Full customization example section for the full code.
By default, some UI elements such as Grid do not participate in hit testing when they don’t have a background set. For the grid AppTitleBar in the sample below to allow dragging, we therefore need to set the background to Transparent .
The UIElement ( AppTitleBar ) is part of the XAML for your app. You can either declare and set the title bar in a root page that doesn’t change, or declare and set a title bar region in each page that your app can navigate to. If you set it in each page, you should make sure the draggable region stays consistent as a user navigates around your app.
You can call SetTitleBar to switch to a new title bar element while your app is running. You can also pass null as the parameter to SetTitleBar to revert to the default dragging behavior. (See «Default draggable region» for more info.)
The draggable region you specify needs to be hit testable, which means, for some elements, you might need to set a transparent background brush. See the remarks on VisualTreeHelper.FindElementsInHostCoordinates for more info.
For example, if you define a Grid as your draggable region, set Background=»Transparent» to make it draggable.
This Grid is not draggable (but visible elements within it are): .
This Grid looks the same, but the whole Grid is draggable: .
Default draggable region
If you don’t specify a draggable region, a rectangle that is the width of the window, the height of the caption buttons, and positioned along the top edge of the window is set as the default draggable region.
If you do define a draggable region, the system shrinks the default draggable region down to a small area the size of a caption button, positioned to the left of the caption buttons (or to the right if the captions buttons are on the left side of the window). This ensures that there is always a consistent area the user can drag.
System caption buttons
The system reserves the upper-left or upper-right corner of the app window for the system caption buttons (Back, Minimize, Maximize, Close). The system retains control of the caption control area to guarantee that minimum functionality is provided for dragging, minimizing, maximizing, and closing the window. The system draws the Close button in the upper-right for left-to-right languages and the upper-left for right-to-left languages.
The dimensions and position of the caption control area is communicated by the CoreApplicationViewTitleBar class so that you can account for it in the layout of your title bar UI. The width of the reserved region on each side is given by the SystemOverlayLeftInset or SystemOverlayRightInset properties, and its height is given by the Height property.
You can draw content underneath the caption control area defined by these properties, such as your app background, but you should not put any UI that you expect the user to be able to interact with. It does not receive any input because input for the caption controls is handled by the system.
You can handle the LayoutMetricsChanged event to respond to changes in the size of the caption buttons. For example, this can happen when the system back button is shown or hidden. Handle this event to verify and update the positioning of UI elements that depend on the title bar’s size.
This example shows how to adjust the layout of your title bar to account for changes like the system back button being shown or hidden. AppTitleBar , LeftPaddingColumn , and RightPaddingColumn are declared in the XAML shown previously.
Interactive content
You can place interactive controls, like buttons, menus, or a search box, in the top part of the app so they appear to be in the title bar. However, there are a few rules you must follow to ensure that your interactive elements receive user input.
- You must call SetTitleBar to define an area as the draggable title bar region. If you don’t, the system sets the default draggable region at the top of the page. The system will then handle all user input to this area, and prevent input from reaching your controls.
- Place your interactive controls over the top of the draggable region defined by the call to SetTitleBar (with a higher z-order). Don’t make your interactive controls children of the UIElement passed to SetTitleBar. After you pass an element to SetTitleBar, the system treats it like the system title bar and handles all pointer input to that element.
Here, the TitleBarButton element has a higher z-order than AppTitleBar , so it receives user input.
Transparency in caption buttons
When you set ExtendViewIntoTitleBar to true, you can make the background of the caption buttons transparent to let your app background show through. You typically set the background to Colors.Transparent for full transparency. For partial transparency, set the alpha channel for the Color you set the property to.
These ApplicationViewTitleBar properties can be transparent:
- ButtonBackgroundColor
- ButtonHoverBackgroundColor
- ButtonPressedBackgroundColor
- ButtonInactiveBackgroundColor
The button background color is not applied to the close button hover and pressed states. The close button always uses the system-defined color for those states.
All other color properties will continue to ignore the alpha channel. If ExtendViewIntoTitleBar is set to false, the alpha channel is always ignored for all ApplicationViewTitleBar color properties.
Full screen and tablet mode
When your app runs in full screen or tablet mode, the system hides the title bar and caption control buttons. However, the user can invoke the title bar to have it shown as an overlay on top of the app’s UI. You can handle the CoreApplicationViewTitleBar.IsVisibleChanged event to be notified when the title bar is hidden or invoked, and show or hide your custom title bar content as needed.
This example shows how to handle IsVisibleChanged to show and hide the AppTitleBar element shown previously.