Investigate: AcrylicBlur always on in an inactive window

[harounhajem]

Proposed feature:
The option to always have AcrylicBlur turned on even when the window loses focus. I'm a power-user and understand the GPU implications if blur is always turned on, but I'm willing to pay that price for the beauty of a blurred background. I've seen it in other UWP apps so it is possible.

Current behavior :
AcrylicBlur is turned off, it dips to the default background color, when the window(terminal) loses focus, which is "default" behavior for UWP.

[zadjii-msft]

I've seen it in other UWP apps so it is possible.

Which applications have you seen this in? The system standard AcrylicBrush (the one we're using) disables acrylic when the window loses focus, which isn't something we can control.

[electronic-dk]

@zadjii-msft I've definitely seen it in a couple of apps, this one comes to mind first:
https://github.com/JasonStein/Notepads

[zadjii-msft]

Ah yea, that one's special though. They're not using the actual system acrylic brush. They're actually rolling their own acrylic brush, using the same combination of effects as the acrylic brush, but with the "disable when the window loses focus" effect disabled.

We absolutely could copy that mechanism (just roll our own), but we just need someone to write that code 😄 I think we've got a dupe sitting around here somewhere for that...

[harounhajem]

@zadjii-msft Thanks for the quick reply. I've had the same discussion with the team working on FluentTerminal, they advised me to fork it from NotePads and make a pull-request in the FluentTerminal project. But unfortunately I didn't have the time to complete it.

However it would be an awesome feature to have and it follows Microsoft Fluent Design principles. I really hope that there is time to implement this feature in alongside this projects roadmap.

Thanks for a great terminal and we are looking forward to the upcoming releases.

[zadjii-msft]

To be fair, Microsoft Fluent Design -> Style for Windows apps -> Acrylic specifically calls out not using acrylic for unfocused windows:

In addition, both background acrylic and in-app acrylic appear as a solid color:

• When the user turns off transparency in Settings > Personalization > Color
• When Battery Saver mode is activated
• When the app runs on low-end hardware

In addition, only background acrylic will replace its translucency and texture with a solid color:

• When an app window on desktop deactivates
• When the Windows app is running on phone, Xbox, HoloLens or tablet mode
  (emph. added)

That being said, I'm gonna leave this open for now. If someone wants to add the "unfocused acrylic" brush to the terminal (behind an off-by-default global setting), I'm not really opposed to stopping them tbh.