Removing the Title bar of external application using c#

Anuya picture Anuya · May 13, 2010 · Viewed 20.2k times · Source

My application starts up another external application.

I want to remove the title bar of this external application once it has started.

Is this feasible, and if so how would it be done?

Based on the comments I am using the working code below

//Finds a window by class name
[DllImport("USER32.DLL")]
public static extern IntPtr FindWindow(string lpClassName, string lpWindowName);

//Sets a window to be a child window of another window
[DllImport("USER32.DLL")]
public static extern IntPtr SetParent(IntPtr hWndChild, IntPtr hWndNewParent);

//Sets window attributes
[DllImport("USER32.DLL")]
public static extern int SetWindowLong(IntPtr hWnd, int nIndex, int dwNewLong);

//Gets window attributes
[DllImport("USER32.DLL")]
public static extern int GetWindowLong(IntPtr hWnd, int nIndex);

[DllImport("user32.dll", EntryPoint = "FindWindow", SetLastError = true)]
static extern IntPtr FindWindowByCaption(IntPtr ZeroOnly, string lpWindowName);


//assorted constants needed
public static int GWL_STYLE = -16;
public static int WS_CHILD = 0x40000000; //child window
public static int WS_BORDER = 0x00800000; //window with border
public static int WS_DLGFRAME = 0x00400000; //window with double border but no title
public static int WS_CAPTION = WS_BORDER | WS_DLGFRAME; //window with a title bar

public void WindowsReStyle()
{
    Process[] Procs = Process.GetProcesses();
    foreach (Process proc in Procs)
    {
        if (proc.ProcessName.StartsWith("notepad"))
        {
            IntPtr pFoundWindow = proc.MainWindowHandle;
            int style = GetWindowLong(pFoundWindow, GWL_STYLE);
            SetWindowLong(pFoundWindow, GWL_STYLE, (style & ~WS_CAPTION));
        }
    }
}

Answer

Alex K. picture Alex K. · May 13, 2010

No need to inject anything, you can just modify the windows style bits as using the API, e.g. this works for Notepad, however YMMV depending on the app your playing with.

alt text

//Get current style
lCurStyle = GetWindowLong(hwnd, GWL_STYLE)

//remove titlebar elements
lCurStyle = lCurStyle And Not WS_CAPTION
lCurStyle = lCurStyle And Not WS_SYSMENU
lCurStyle = lCurStyle And Not WS_THICKFRAME
lCurStyle = lCurStyle And Not WS_MINIMIZE
lCurStyle = lCurStyle And Not WS_MAXIMIZEBOX

//apply new style
SetWindowLong hwnd, GWL_STYLE, lCurStyle

//reapply a 3d border
lCurStyle = GetWindowLong(hwnd, GWL_EXSTYLE)

SetWindowLong hwnd, GWL_EXSTYLE, lCurStyle Or WS_EX_DLGMODALFRAME

//redraw
SetWindowPos hwnd, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, SWP_NOMOVE Or SWP_NOSIZE Or SWP_FRAMECHANGED