Can I change the owner of a window?

Question

I have a WS_POPUP window owned by my main frame window. I need to be able to change the owner of the window. I use CreateEx to create the window and pass in the initial owner when I make that call. I can easily change parents of a window, including one that has the WS_POPUP style instead of WS_CHILD.

But, I have not been able to find a way to change the owner. Is there a way to do this?

Answer 1

Change the Tag : this is not UWP, but Win32...

You can use GWL_HWNDPARENT with SetWindowLong to change the owner but it is not recommended

I did some tests and it uses SetParent instead between childs or it even crashed my OS (Windows 10) when I set an Edit control as owner of a Popup window...

Answer 2

Hi, @Holland, RD (DI SW ME PRD SDE AS) A window can have a parent or an owner but not both:

A window can be created as a child window (WS_CHILD set) or a top-level window (WS_CHILD not set). A child window has a parent, which you specify when you call CreateWindowEx, and which you can change by calling SetParent. A top-level window, on the other hand, has no parent. Its parent is NULL.

Ownership is a concept that relates top-level windows. A top-level window can optionally have an owner, which is also specified when you call CreateWindowEx, and which you can change by a complicated mechanism described in my talk.

Note that changing a window’s parent or owner is not a normal operation. You usually create a window with a specific parent or owner and leave it that way for the lifetime of the window.

Now, a window can have a parent, or it can have an owner, or it can have neither, but it can never have both.

Or Could you share the use case you need to set owner?

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