Windows 11 22H2 brings mica/acrylic design to more Win32 desktop apps

Windows 11’s native apps (such as File Explorer) and other shell apps use rounded corners and Fluent Design elements (such as Acrylic) by default. In addition to rounded corners, another important design feature of Windows 11 is materials like mica, which aligns the background color of apps with the desktop.

Mica is similar to acrylic, but it works slightly differently. As Microsoft describes it, Windows Mica Materials creates a "color hierarchy" by aligning backgrounds with applications to differentiate between multiple open instances of an application, such as File Explorer and more.

Mica is essentially an opacity effect that applies to selected areas of your application, such as windows and title bars. It's a fancy translucent effect, but Mica has nothing to do with transparency. Instead, simply sample the desktop wallpaper to create a translucent effect suitable for the title bar or window.

Since Mica only samples the desktop wallpaper once and it is not a transparent effect, it will not affect the performance of the system.

Currently, developers cannot enable this new material in their Win32 applications. However, this will soon change. Starting with Windows 11 version 22H2, developers can easily enable Mica or Acrylic in containers/windows of their traditional Win32 applications (i.e. desktop programs).

A new document released by the company confirms this.

Mica is located in the Desktop Window Manager (DWM), and a new Windows 11 variable called "DWM_SYSTEMBACKDROP_TYPE" will allow developers to specify mica or acrylic materials in their desktop applications.

# "Flag used to specify system-drawn background material for windows, including behind non-client areas," the support documentation reads. According to Microsoft, developers can choose from four constants:

• DWMSBT_AUTO: This is the default behavior. In this constant, the Desktop Window Manager (DWM) automatically determines the system-drawn background material for the application window.
• DWMSBT_NONE: If the developer has a custom design for the application window, Mica or Acrylic can be skipped. For example, Spotify comes with its own titles. When this value is set, Microsoft does not draw any system background.
• DWMSBT_MAINWINDOW: Apply the background material effect corresponding to the long-lived window.
• DWMSBT_TRANSIENTWINDOW: Apply the background material effect corresponding to the transient window.
• DWMSBT_TABBEDWINDOW: Applies the background material effect corresponding to the window with the tab title bar.

As mentioned before, Mica is part of the Desktop Window Manager (DWM) and can be used in a variety of applications. In fact, there is a third-party open source tool called "Mica for Everyone" that uses methods such as DwmSetWindowAttribute to force Mica to be enabled in any application.

Mica in Traditional Tools

While this update is great news for everyone, there is a catch. Microsoft says the new variant is exclusive to Windows 11 22H2 (Build 22621). In other words, if developers were targeting an earlier version of the operating system, they would be stuck with the old design.

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