How can I change window border size?

I removed caption bar of my window so now it only has a border around it. I don’t want to set BorderStyle to bsNone but I want to remove border. How can I do it?

let me explain more. I want to make sth like Photoshop GUI. If I set border style to bsNone, I’ll lose lots of features on win7. I tried to use GraphicControls instead of Form Caption bar to move the window (by handling WMNCHitTest message). It works but double click doesn’t maximize and restore the window when border style is bsNone but everything works well when it is bsResizable. I want to set BorderStyle to bsResizable but I want to remove the border like when it is bsNone

3 Answers 3

You can set the form’s border to bsNone and then add a panel to the form. Set the panel’s align property to alClient and adjust its border however you like. You have control over the inner and outer bevels and their widths to a 1 pixel granularity. Since Panel1 is a container, it should be easy to just drag everything onto it as though it were the form itself. In the designer, it would be nearly invisible.

If you are not familiar with it, you can drag all the controls from one container to another using the structure view (it’s called the object treeview in older versions). This makes it so you don’t have to redesign your form to do this. If the panel itself is a problem, you can always just send it to the back and leave all the other controls on the form. It will look exactly the same, but then the controls maintain a TForm parent instead of a TPanel parent. It’s just a little extra thing to maintain in the designer.

Having said that, I also recommend considering Mason’s comment about nonstandard UIs.

Setting the borderstyle to «bsSizeToolWin» isn’t an option? It would be a thinner border, but it would be resizeable and it’s still conform the Windows standard.

How can I change the Border size of desktop windows in Windows 10

The Border size of the windows in Windows 10 is so small that I cannot even see it.

How can I get whider window frames?

If windows overlap, then it’s very difficult to see where one window ends and the other begins.

This was solved very good from Windows 3.1 till Windows 8, but in Windows 10 it turned to worse.

Used resolution: 2560 * 1440. A line of one pixel is defenetly too smal to be recognized.

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OK, that helps, but is a bit extreme.

I’ve switched the color of the border to one with more contrast. That’s nearly good.

Is there any reason why Microsoft has shrunk the border width?

The number of pixels on the screens grow by each generation of monitor and the size of the window area doesn’t change appreciably if the window frame is 2, 4 or 6 pixel width.

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Most people want narrower borders, not wider. Windows has no ability to configure the width of borders. You might find a third-party solution with a web search.

Can you support that with anything other than your own bias?

To be correct, only windows 10 cannot do this.

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Most people want narrow borders? Paah.

Borders disappear when working with full screen window.

But everybody who uses multiple windows sometimes needs to resize windows.

This is a real pain with thin borders and I wish ignorant designers at Miicrosoft would all suffer from parkinsons disease so that they design also for elderly or disabled people.

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The selectable region for these borders hasn’t changed at all: there are still 10 active selectable pixels same as they used to be. Only the visuals have changed here.

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Sorry for being unkind but to me it is also unkind to change useability stuff to the worse for merely design considerations.

The active selectable right bottom corner was more than 10 pixels and now I need to resize X and Y separately which is 100% overhead.

The border width may be still 10 active pixels but with smaller pixels on hd screens the effective hand jitter needs to be less.

Why can’t the border width and color just be user configurable?

This is a computers operating system and thus intrinsically flexible.

To me it is rather insolent to impose a more and more specific view of the world to the end users.

With XP the desktop was designed clean and lean and quite ergonomic.

Since then things have become worse with every other version of windows and the windows 10 logo reflects this perfectly by looking like a dungeon window.

How to reduce window border size in Windows 8, Windows 7 and Windows Vista

If you are not happy with the huge window frame present by default in Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8, you can easily change its thickness. In this article, we will see how it can be done.

Windows Vista and Windows 7 users can configure the appearance of the window border using the GUI. In Personalization-> Color-> Advanced appearance, there is an option called «Border Padding». You can set it to 0 and get a 1px border! Here is a picture of the default window frame size in Windows 7:

And this is how the reduced one looks with the appropriate option set:

As you can see, there is nothing complex about it.

But things are different in Windows 8/Windows 8.1. Microsoft removed all of the advanced appearance options, so the user cannot reduce the window frame easily. To reduce window borders, you need to apply a Registry tweak or use a third party tool.

The Registry tweak should be done as follows.

1. Open Registry Editor.
2. Go to the following Registry path:

You will see a string (REG_SZ) value named PaddedBorderWidth. Its value data uses the following formula:

For example, by default it is -60, which means 4px:

Just set it to 0:

Now, sign out from your user account and log in back. Window borders will be 1px, as expected:

To avoid Registry editing and the sign out requirement, as well as to save your time, you can use Winaero Tweaker. It offers you the appropriate option and applies changes on-the-fly. Run Winaero Tweaker, go to Advanced Appearance -> Window Borders and adjust window frames the way you need:

The changes will be applied instantly!

As for Windows 10, its default theme does not draw any border. This theme is modified by Microsoft and can’t have borders at all. However, if you activate and apply the hidden Aero Lite theme, you will be able to manage borders using the Registry or by using Winaero Tweaker.

That’s it. If you have any questions or suggestions, you are welcome to comment.

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About Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer from Russia who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

19 thoughts on “ How to reduce window border size in Windows 8, Windows 7 and Windows Vista ”

To get the narrowest borders the value BorderWidth should be set to 0. Winaero Tweaker leaves it at the default -15 setting.

To apply the Registry changes the user has to restart the computer or else log out and log back in again. However, Winaero Tweaker applies the changes immediately. How does it do that? Is there a script you can share with us?

0 is ignored by OS. minimal value is 1, which should be -15
To set borders, Winaero tweaker uses APIs which are in Windows since Windows 9x

You are incorrect,, sir/. Windows 10 does not ignore the BorderWidth value data.

No, you are wrong.
Windows 10 does not draw any border and does not respect the mentioned value with the default theme.
Set Aero Lite and try to play with BorderWidth. You will see that minimal value is 1.
The only parameter which can be set to 0 is PaddedBorderWidth, but even in that case it will draw 1px border with Aero Lite and no border with Default theme in case of Windows 10.

Thank you for your reply. It’s possible that Windows 10 doesn’t respect a 0 setting for BorderWidth when the default theme is used. I don’t know. I’m using the Aero Lite theme. I can assure you that setting BorderWidtth to 0 and PaddedBorderWidth to 0 when the Aero Lite theme is selected will create a narrower border than leaving the BorderWidth setting at -15 or -20, which is the default Aero Lite setting.

With Winaero Tweaker I enabled Aero Lite. It performs as wanted; I can adjust the border width with Winaero Tweaker and the color with Windows/Personalization and Colors. However, the system time on the Taskbar is BLACK text, which I can hardly see. Is there a way to make it white as are the other system icons a the far right on the Taskbar?

Unfortunately, I found no way to change it.

The free T-Clock enables changing the text color and more: https://github.com/White-Tiger/T-Clock
Thanks for WinAero Tweaker.

every time windows 10 reboots it seems to reset my theme back to the 4px “border padding” value… what is the trick to get this to stay across reboots?

This Windows10 “1px border with the rest of the border being invisible under the default windows theme(s)” thing causes issues with File Explorer opening at different position after being closed and re-opened (it ”cascades” a few pixels off, as if it is a second instance of FE open at the time time).

AeroLite theme remmebers FE’s position when closed and re-opened, but there is so many other things that AeroLite changes. Duller colors for hidden UI elements (This PC disk drive space used-up in Tiles view), nearly unreadable text on inactive titlebars. I’m very greatful for the AeroLite workaround, but is there a way to make FE remember it’s position under the new Win10 default themes? Or, failing that, to make AeroLite look more like the default Win10 themes?

Will you PLEASE tell me how to UNDO the Border settings? All they did was shrink my Windows File Explorer titlebar text to an *unacceptable* small size

Hello,
Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics
Set PaddedBorderWidth to -60
Sign out.
Sign in back.
This will restore the default border width.

This didn’t fix it for me, my window title bars are still tiny!

Can you share a screenshot?

This just destroys the interface on Win10 1903. If this shouldn’t be used on Custom Theme that should be blocked or clearly labeled. It shrunk the interface to unusable levels. It will not re-enlarge with the ‘Light’ theme selected. Please advise. Screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/pU6XtaX

From the screenshot it doesn’t look like something related to windows borders.
It looks like other settings like “menus height” and “statusbar font” were customized.
Did you change anything there?
Please use “Reset advanced appearance” if you did that.

Correct it by altering and resetting the Display->Scale and Layout Zoom Setting.

I thought this was going to fix my issue with Windows 10’s Alt-Printscreen shortcut capturing the shadow. I’m sure this is a problem because I upgraded from Windows 8.1 to 10 and now it thinks there’s always a border there, even though there isn’t, and it captures it. Seems any new install of Windows 10 has Alt-Printscreen functioning normally and I’m stuck with the ugly version with no fix in sight.

I Don’t Know If Is A Problem Of Windows 10 Or There Are Some Fixes To Achieve It! But Why If I Open Task Manager And I Position In (x,y) Coordinates Then I Close And Then I Reopen It … It’s Opened At (x-4px, y) Coordinates?