How do i enable Visual styles

Question

How Do I enable Visual styles when using MSYS2 MinGW-w64, in the simplest way, like how Qt Does it, I am strugglinng trying to enable visual styles in mingw-w64, i just cant find a way

Answer 1

Either with a Manifest as explained at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/controls/cookbook-overview or by code with

CreateActCtx/ActivateActCtx

By code (tested on Windows 10), at beginning, before any window is created :

	ULONG_PTR ul;
	HANDLE hActCtx = CreateAndActivateContext(&ul);

with :

HANDLE CreateAndActivateContext(ULONG_PTR* pul)
{
	HANDLE hActCtx = NULL;
	ACTCTX act = { 0 };
	TCHAR szPath[MAX_PATH];
	HINSTANCE hInstance = LoadLibrary(L"SHLWAPI.DLL");
	GetModuleFileName(hInstance, szPath, ARRAYSIZE(szPath));
	act.cbSize = sizeof(act);
	act.dwFlags = ACTCTX_FLAG_RESOURCE_NAME_VALID;
	act.lpResourceName = MAKEINTRESOURCE(123);
	act.lpSource = szPath;
	hActCtx = CreateActCtx(&act);
	if (hActCtx != INVALID_HANDLE_VALUE)
		ActivateActCtx(hActCtx, pul);
	return hActCtx;
}