electron-tinted-with-sidebar

Create a native wallpaper-tinted window with a sidebar in Electron on macOS

Electron BrowserWindow supports only one vibrancy mode at a time, but standard macOS apps commonly have both a sidebar and main content area (often titlebar and inspector) that should be tinted based on the wallpaper on the user's desktop (macOS System Settings > Appearance > Allow wallpaper tinting in windows). The setWindowLayout function adds NSVisualEffectViews with the correct materials.

The setWindowAnimationBehavior function enables you to configure a window to have the "zoom up" entrance animation.

See demo code for additional styling in HTML, such as the separator lines and subtle sidebar inner shadow. Dark mode is supported through macOS System Settings or nativeTheme.themeSource.

demo.mov

Installing

npm install electron-tinted-with-sidebar

API

setWindowLayout(nativeWindowHandle, sidebarWidth, titlebarHeight[, titlebarMarginRight]) (macOS only)

• nativeWindowHandle Buffer (NSView*) from BrowserWindow's win.getNativeWindowHandle()
• sidebarWidth integer
• titlebarHeight integer
• titlebarMarginRight integer (optional) - This is useful to expose the background for a full-height inspector. Defaults to 0.

setWindowAnimationBehavior(nativeWindowHandle, isDocument) (macOS only)

• nativeWindowHandle Buffer (NSView*) from BrowserWindow's win.getNativeWindowHandle()
• isDocument bool – true sets the NSWindow animationBehavior to NSWindowAnimationBehaviorDocumentWindow, which animates the window (zoom up) on entrance.

Note that you must call this function before the window is shown or it will have no effect.

Usage

In main process:

const { BrowserWindow } = require("electron");
const tint = require("electron-tinted-with-sidebar");

function createWindow() {
	const mainWindow = new BrowserWindow({
		height: 500,
		width: 800,
		backgroundColor: "#00000000",
		titleBarStyle: "hidden",
		vibrancy: "sidebar",
	});
	tint.setWindowAnimationBehavior(mainWindow.getNativeWindowHandle(), true);
	tint.setWindowLayout(mainWindow.getNativeWindowHandle(), 200, 52);
	mainWindow.webContents.loadFile("index.html");
}

app.whenReady().then(() => createWindow());

How to Run Demo

After cloning this repository, run:

npm install
npm install --prefix demo/
npm rebuild && npm start --prefix demo/

License

MIT License

Acknowledgements

• electron-window-rotator – a great example project