3 Ways to create a window with blurring background on Windows 10

This post is an answer from Stack Overflow and introduce some methods to create a window with blurring background.

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中文 English

Options to blurring background

We have three ways to blurring background on Windows 10 and each has its advantages and disadvantages.

1. Call the Windows internal API SetWindowCompositionAttribute. You can get a lightly blurred transparent Window but this transparency is much less than the iOS one.
   

2. Add a BlurEffect to the window background image. You can get a more similar visual effect like the iOS one with very poor performance. But in this way, the background image is fixed and cannot be updated when the window moves.
   

3. Use UWP instead of WPF and use the AcrylicBrush. You can get a high-performance blur transparent window. But you should try the UWP Application development.
   

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SetWindowCompositionAttribute API

Calling SetWindowCompositionAttribute API is not very easy, so I’ve written a wrapper class for easier usage. You can use my class by writing only a simple line in the XAML file or in the cs file.

<Window x:Class="Walterlv.Demo.MainWindow"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    xmlns:interop="clr-namespace:Walterlv.Demo.Interop"
    mc:Ignorable="d" Title="MainWindow" Height="350" Width="525"
    interop:WindowBlur.IsEnabled="True"
    Background="Transparent">
</Window>

Or you can use it in the cs file like this:

public class MainWindow : Window
{
    public MainWindow()
    {
        InitializeComponent();
        WindowBlur.SetIsEnabled(this, true);
    }
}

Just add my wrapper class into your project. It’s a very long class so I pasted into GitHub: https://gist.github.com/walterlv/752669f389978440d344941a5fcd5b00.

I also write a post for its usage, but it’s not in English: https://walterlv.github.io/post/win10/2017/10/02/wpf-transparent-blur-in-windows-10.html

WPF BlurEffect

Just set the Effect property of a WPF UIElement.

<Window x:Class="MejirdrituTeWarqoudear.MainWindow"
        xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
        xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
        AllowsTransparency="True" WindowStyle="None"
        Width="540" Height="360">
    <Grid>
        <Image Source="YourImageFile.jpg" Stretch="Fill" Margin="-60">
            <Image.Effect>
                <BlurEffect KernelType="Gaussian" Radius="60" />
            </Image.Effect>
        </Image>
        <Border CornerRadius="60" Margin="30" Background="#7F000000">
            <TextBlock Foreground="White"
                       FontSize="20" FontWeight="Light" TextAlignment="Center"
                       HorizontalAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Center">
                <Run Text="Hello World" FontSize="48"/>
                <LineBreak/>
                <Run Text="walterlv.github.io"/>
            </TextBlock>
        </Border>
    </Grid>
</Window>

Notice that it has a very poor performance.

You can also add a RectangleGeometry to clip your UIElement into a rounded rectangle.

<Window x:Class="MejirdrituTeWarqoudear.MainWindow"
        xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
        xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
        Width="540" Height="360">
    <Grid>
        <Grid.Clip>
            <RectangleGeometry RadiusX="60" RadiusY="60" Rect="30 30 480 300" />
        </Grid.Clip>
        <Image Source="High+Sierra.jpg" Stretch="Fill" Margin="-60">
            <Image.Effect>
                <BlurEffect KernelType="Gaussian" Radius="60" />
            </Image.Effect>
        </Image>
        <Border Background="#7F000000">
            <TextBlock Foreground="White"
                        FontSize="20" FontWeight="Light" TextAlignment="Center"
                        HorizontalAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Center">
                <Run Text="Hello World" FontSize="48"/>
                <LineBreak/>
                <Run Text="walterlv.github.io"/>
            </TextBlock>
        </Border>
    </Grid>
</Window>

UWP AcyclicBrush

You can read Microsoft’s documents Acrylic material - UWP app developer - Microsoft Docs for more details about how to write an AcylicBrush.

本文会经常更新，请阅读原文： https://blog.walterlv.com/post/create-blur-background-window-en.html ，以避免陈旧错误知识的误导，同时有更好的阅读体验。

本作品采用 知识共享署名-非商业性使用-相同方式共享 4.0 国际许可协议 进行许可。欢迎转载、使用、重新发布，但务必保留文章署名 吕毅 （包含链接： https://blog.walterlv.com ），不得用于商业目的，基于本文修改后的作品务必以相同的许可发布。如有任何疑问，请 与我联系 ([email protected]) 。