Thursday, March 17, 2011

Notepad++ inactive tab-color fix

If you use Notepad++ as your primary source code editor, you might share my annoyance with the background color of inactive tabs. (The default color makes the inactive tab titles very hard to read.) Even more annoying is that when a person tries to edit the colors by going to Settings / Style Configurator, the changes don't stick. Here's a handy fix:

The file you need to alter is stylers.xml, which in Windows 7 is found in: C:\\Users\[your user file]\AppData\Roaming\Notepad++\stylers.xml.

Right at the bottom of the document, the very last WidgetStyle, is the following:

WidgetStyle name="Inactive tabs" styleID="0" fgColor="555555" bgColor="f0f0f0"


I've already changed the hex colors to what I like. The fgColor controls the text color ("foreground"), and the bgColor controls the background color. Set those however you like, restart your code editor, and you should be in business!

via: Sourceforge bug support
Posted by Unknown at 2:37 PM
Labels: ,

9 comments:

  1. AnonymousApril 12, 2011 at 4:04 PM

    I was hopeful that at last there was a solution (this bug has been around for ages but nobody from the notepad++ team seems to be too bothered)

    Sadly applying this change did not work.
    The path to styles.xml is different in XP (somewhere under c:/Document And Settings//Application Data/notepad++) but changing the settings had no affect.

    ReplyDelete
  2. UnknownMay 12, 2011 at 8:47 AM

    Ah! That's too bad! Maybe it's time to upgrade...

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousJuly 28, 2011 at 4:55 PM

    Did not work for me either, on Win 7. Maybe some difference in configuration? Or maybe just a change in the source. Weird that the styler.xml is there but doesn't have any effect...

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousJanuary 30, 2012 at 7:51 PM

    Good hint. Works perfectly with latest Notepad++ (v5.9.8) on Windows 7.

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  5. UnknownJanuary 31, 2012 at 2:41 PM

    Wonderful!

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousFebruary 15, 2012 at 12:28 AM

    Works for me too.
    I'm guessing it doesn't work via the UI because the styleID of the "Inactive tabs" style is zero.

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnonymousJuly 13, 2012 at 6:23 PM

    Works for me beautifully (under Windows 7).

    I made two changes:

    Inactive tab text color is black (just like active tab)


    Active tab highlight bar is red to draw more attention now that all tabs look the same for text colors

    ReplyDelete
  8. AnonymousJuly 13, 2012 at 6:26 PM

    How nice a technical blog stripped out the xml. Here are my changes again:

    Inactive tab text color is black (just like active tab)
    WidgetStyle name="Active tab focused indicator" styleID="0" fgColor="FF0000"

    Active tab highlight bar is red to draw more attention now that all tabs look the same for text colors
    WidgetStyle name="Inactive tabs" styleID="0" fgColor="000000" bgColor="C0C0C0"

    You have to restart the editor to see the changes

    ReplyDelete
  9. AnonymousJuly 27, 2012 at 6:37 PM

    THANK YOU!!!!!

    This has bugged me since the dawn of time!

    On my Win7 installation I found my stylers.xml in:

    C:\Program Files\Notepad++\unicode

    ReplyDelete

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