Changing Highlight color

Question

Hi team,

We need to change selected text background color in Windows Edit control. We found below options to change the same.

1. Update the registry [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors\Hilight]
2. Using SetSysColors() API

In above cases changes are made in OS level.

But we have a requirement to change the selected text background color only for an application [Not entire system]. Is there any option for this?

Also identified below thread, that describe about OS level update.
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-start-win_general/how-to-change-the-highlight-color-properly/b720d88a-8ff6-4ca3-8815-c66e2d9f2c29

Answer 1

You can override Paint (WM_PAINT) event but it is complex because there are many messages to handle (mouse, keyboard, focus, ...)

A simpler way is to host a WPF TextBox with ElementHost Class

A quick test with 2 TextBoxes and SelectionBrush Property =>

Answer 2

Thanks for your reply,

You can override Paint (WM_PAINT) event but it is complex because there are many messages to handle (mouse, keyboard, focus, ...)

We tried the WM_PAINT message to handle the issue and we noticed that WM_PAINT message is not received while editing and selecting the text.

A simpler way is to host a WPF TextBox with ElementHost Class

We are using CPP application so WPF solution is not able to using in our scenario.

Is there any other solution.