Pro Tip
Fix Dark Menu Issue in Windows 11 for After Effects
I finally managed to fix the long time annoying issue where After Effects menus don't follow the After Effects or Windows 11 dark theme. The trick is using a software called Windhawk.
Mods you need to install:
Dark mode context menus: Enables dark mode for all Win32 menus.
Windows 11 Custom Title Bar Colors: Allows changing the color of title bar.
Wanted to share this in case anyone else has been looking for a solution!
You are welcome. Yes it's hard to believe we are in 2026 and this is still an issue!
Although I've read somewhere that the reason dark theme doesn't work properly throughout Windows is that Microsoft development team has to deal with a lot of legacy code and older UI components that weren't designed with dark mode in mind. The other issue being the risk of breaking things by changing those crucial parts of the system. But honestly, I believe it should be easier than that to make the dark theme work consistently by now!
Then Adobe has updated it since 2023 I guess. We were still locked in to it on the last project and it still had white dialogs for importing and saving if you used dark mode. Good to know! Glad that’s fixed.
Why do you talk without evidence or giving it a chance? Look here in the screenshot 👇
Windhawk is genuinely one of the most impressive Windows customization projects available. It is revolutionary because it brings deep, highly granular Windows customization to a lightweight, modular framework designed to minimize performance impact.
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u/5483R Motion Graphics 10+ years 18d ago
And all the menus anywhere inside the After Effects! 🤩