Different colors for active/inactive Unity window title bars?

Question

Wow - this seems so difficult to resolve! I've searched and see other people with similar problem/complaint about being able to quickly identify active window, for example, Highlight Window with focus even more But, I have yet to find any real solution!

I have 3 monitors, and am "color-impaired" or "shade-blind" (a step above 'color-blind') I find the difference in active vs inactive window so subtle I can't tell what's what.

Adding a window shadow does not help much because full-screen windows don't get the shadow. Plus, the shadow is quite subtle, so it's not quick-easy identifier.

I'm used to MS Windows where it is so easy to change the window's title bar color, and to have very high contrast. I can see in an instant what window is the active window. I'm constantly - and this is after few weeks now on Ubuntu - having problem figuring this out with Ubuntu.

The simple solution for me would be to have 2 different highly contrasting colors for the title bar of windows. Can't this be done? I've tried looking for other themes, but they all seem to stick with the 'all windows have the same (or so it appears to me) colored title bar whether active or not'. I am finding this issue VERY frustrating. I also tried the dim inactive window plugin and it didn't do much of anything and is of no help. (Ubuntu 16.04. 3 monitors, nvidia controller and their video driver)

Answer 1

Have you checked the answer for this question? Create or edit ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css as:

.titlebar {
    background: #3089FF;
    color:white; 
}

.titlebar:backdrop  {
    background: #777777;
    color:white;
} 

Note that you can choose different colors to suite your preferences. Then refresh the gnome:

setsid gnome-shell --replace

I just tried it and it worked for me.

Answer 2

Out of the box solution

There is a quick little trick pressing Alt+F7, jiggling your mouse and then press Left-Click on mouse when window is positioned back where you wanted it.

The disadvantage is time to manually realign window to it's original coordinates. A better method involving a script assigned to shortcut key is described in the next section.

---

Reveal active Window with Shortcut Key

This is an improved script over revealwindow2 documented in the next section. That script shrinks and expands the window which overtaxes browser windows that have to reformat the web page layouts.

This new script revealwindow3 can be assigned to a shortcut key so no matter where you are you know the active window:

revealwindow3 bash script

#!/bin/bash

# NAME: revealwindow3
# CALL: Best method is to call via hotkey.

# DESC: Reveal active window by moving it in circle on screen.
# PARM: Pare 1 override default # pixels for moving
#       For Ask Ubuntu Question:
#       https://askubuntu.com/questions/943147/different-colors-for-active-inactive-unity-window-title-bars

# DATE: November 19, 2019.

# NOTE: Enhancement to revealwindow2 which shrinks and expand sizes of window
#       which taxes browsers, etc. that have to reformat the window. Also cause
#       of epileptic like shock.

# Dependancy
command -v xdotool >/dev/null 2>&1 || { echo >&2 \
        "xdotool package required but it is not installed.  Aborting."; \
        exit 3; }

# Defaults

STEP_PIXELS=25
SLEEP=.025

if [[ "$#" -eq 1 ]] ; then
    [[ "$1" -lt 5 ]] || [[ "$1" -gt 1000 ]] && { \
        echo "STEP_PIXELS must be between 5 and 1000" ; exit 2; }
    STEP_PIXELS="$1"
fi

# Get Window Information
    WinID=$(xdotool getactivewindow)
  WinLeft=$(xwininfo -id "$WinID" | grep 'ute upper-left X:' | cut -d: -f2)
   WinTop=$(xwininfo -id "$WinID" | grep 'ute upper-left Y:' | cut -d: -f2)
#echo "Win Flds: $WinLeft x $WinTop x $WinWidth x $WinHeight"

# Array of steps
StepArr=( R R R R R D D D D L L L L L U U U U U )

CurrLeft=$(( WinLeft - (STEP_PIXELS *2) ))
[[ $CurrLeft -lt 0 ]] && CurrLeft=0
CurrTop=$(( WinTop - (STEP_PIXELS *3) ))
[[ $CurrTop -lt 0 ]] && CurrTop=0

function XdoMove () {
    local i
    i="$1"
    case "$1" in
    R)
        CurrLeft=$(( CurrLeft + STEP_PIXELS )) ;;
    D)
        CurrTop=$(( CurrTop + STEP_PIXELS )) ;;
    L)
        CurrLeft=$(( CurrLeft - STEP_PIXELS ))
        [[ $CurrLeft -lt 0 ]] && CurrLeft=0 ;;
    U)
        CurrTop=$(( CurrTop - STEP_PIXELS ))
        [[ $CurrTop -lt 0 ]] && CurrTop=0 ;;
    esac

    xdotool windowmove "$WinID" "$CurrLeft" "$CurrTop"
    sleep $SLEEP
}

xdotool windowmove "$WinID" "$CurrLeft" "$CurrTop"
for i in "${StepArr[@]}" ; do XdoMove "$i" ; done


# Restore original Window size and position just in case
xdotool windowmove "$WinID" "$WinLeft" "$WinTop"

sleep .1 # Need time for xorg to update itself.

# Compensate for Window refusing to move to top (Y) coordinate specified
   InfoTop=$(xwininfo -id "$WinID" | grep 'ute upper-left Y:' | cut -d: -f2)

if [[ $InfoTop -ne $WinTop ]] ; then
    Adjust=$((InfoTop - WinTop))
    AdjTop=$((WinTop - Adjust))
    xdotool windowmove "$WinID" "$WinLeft" "$AdjTop"
    echo "Top adjusted by: -$Adjust from: $WinTop to: $AdjTop"
fi

---

A script to highlight active window

This method uses shortcut key. I used Ctrl+Alt+W because left pinky + left middle finger + left thumb is an easy combination. Assign the shortcut key to the script reavelwindow2.

The script shrinks the active window in 10 steps and then expands it in 5 steps. Originally I wrote the script using wmctrl but it wouldn't work for me. So I used xdotool instead:

#!/bin/bash

# NAME: revealwindow2
# CALL: Best method is to call via hotkey.

# DESC: Shrink and expand size of active window.
#       For Ask Ubuntu Question:
#       https://askubuntu.com/questions/943147/different-colors-for-active-inactive-unity-window-title-bars

# DATE: November 17, 2019. Modified November 18, 2019.

# Dependancy
command -v xdotool >/dev/null 2>&1 || { echo >&2 \
        "xdotool package required but it is not installed.  Aborting."; \
        exit 3; }

# Get Window Information
    WinID=$(xdotool getactivewindow)
  WinLeft=$(xwininfo -id "$WinID" | grep 'ute upper-left X:' | cut -d: -f2)
   WinTop=$(xwininfo -id "$WinID" | grep 'ute upper-left Y:' | cut -d: -f2)
 WinWidth=$(xwininfo -id "$WinID" | grep 'Width:' | cut -d: -f2)
WinHeight=$(xwininfo -id "$WinID" | grep 'Height:' | cut -d: -f2)
#echo "Win Flds: $WinLeft x $WinTop x $WinWidth x $WinHeight"

WidthStep=$(( WinWidth / 10 ))
HeightStep=$(( WinHeight / 10 ))

function XdoResize () {
    local i
    i="$1"
    NewLeft=$(( i * WidthStep/2 + WinLeft ))
    NewTop=$(( i * HeightStep/2 + WinTop ))
    NewWidth=$(( WinWidth - ( i * WidthStep) ))
    NewHeight=$(( WinHeight - ( i * HeightStep) ))

    xdotool windowsize "$WinID" "$NewWidth" "$NewHeight"
    xdotool windowmove "$WinID" "$NewLeft" "$NewTop"
    sleep .012
}

# Shrink window with xdotool
for (( i=1; i<10; i++ )) ; do XdoResize $i ; done

# Expand window with xdotool
for (( i=5; i>0; i-- )) ; do XdoResize $i ; done

# Restore original Window size and position just in case
xdotool windowsize "$WinID" "$WinWidth" "$WinHeight"
xdotool windowmove "$WinID" "$WinLeft" "$WinTop"

sleep .1 # Need time for xorg to update itself.

# Compensate for Window refusing to move to top (Y) coordinate specified
   InfoTop=$(xwininfo -id "$WinID" | grep 'ute upper-left Y:' | cut -d: -f2)

if [[ $InfoTop -ne $WinTop ]] ; then
    Adjust=$((InfoTop - WinTop))
    AdjTop=$((WinTop - Adjust))
    xdotool windowmove "$WinID" "$WinLeft" "$AdjTop"
    echo "Top adjusted by: -$Adjust from: $WinTop to: $AdjTop"
fi

Some windows don't allow resizing. In this case the Window will just move down to the right and then back up to the left. You still get the same visual clues which is the active window, just with different movements.

Answer 3

As per Ubuntu 16.04 Documentation, you can open settings and go to the universal access section. All you have to do is turn on High Contrast, and you're done.

You can find this option in Settings > Universal Access > Seeing > High Contrast. If you're using an earlier version of Ubuntu, this should still work.