Taskbar Dimmer

Dims the Windows 11 taskbar while you are not using it, for OLED screens. The taskbar is the one thing that never moves, so it is the first thing to burn in. This keeps it dark until you actually look at it.

• Fades to a dark overlay a moment after the mouse leaves the taskbar; fades back the instant you hover it.
• Reveals while the Windows key is held, while the Start menu, search, quick settings, notification centre, widgets or the tray overflow is open, while the mouse is over any of those flyouts, taskbar thumbnails or menus, and while a context menu anchored on the taskbar (a tray icon's menu, Win+X) is under the mouse.
• Gets out of the way completely while a fullscreen app or game owns the screen.
• Works with secondary-monitor taskbars, taskbar moves/resizes, DPI changes and explorer restarts.
• One small exe (about 50 KB), no installer, no dependencies (uses the .NET Framework that is part of Windows). Idle CPU is a fraction of a percent of one core: it polls the mouse and a handful of window states ~64 times a second while a fade is running or the mouse is near the taskbar, ~21 times a second otherwise, and 4 times a second while a fullscreen app is up or dimming is paused.

Use

Download TaskbarDimmer.exe from the latest release or build it (see below), and run it. It lives in the tray (look under the overflow chevron the first time; drag it out if you like). Right-click the icon for:

• Dim the taskbar when idle - pause/resume (double-click the icon does the same)
• Dim strength - 40% to 90% dark (default 70%)
• Dim after the mouse leaves - immediately up to 3 s (default 0.6 s)
• Start with Windows - adds/removes a HKCU\...\Run entry for the current exe path (and clears a "disabled" switch left by Settings > Apps > Startup or Task Manager)
• Exit

Settings live in %APPDATA%\TaskbarDimmer\settings.ini, created with defaults on first run. The tray menu maintains the first three keys; the rest are hand-edited (restart the app to apply). Keep the file plain text without a BOM.

[Dimmer]
Enabled=1
DimPercent=70
DimDelayMs=600
DimFadeMs=400            ; fade duration towards dimmed
RevealFadeMs=150         ; fade duration towards revealed
HoverMargin=0            ; extra pixels around the taskbar that still count as hovering
TaskbarFocusRevealMs=8000 ; how long to stay revealed while the taskbar itself has keyboard focus (Win+T); any navigation key re-arms it
ExcludeFromCapture=0     ; 1 = the dimmer is left out of screenshots and screen recordings

How it works

A click-through, always-on-top, layered black window is placed directly above each taskbar window (Shell_TrayWnd / Shell_SecondaryTrayWnd) and its alpha is animated. Every ~15 ms it checks the cursor position, the Windows keys, which window is in the foreground and under the cursor (classified by owning process: explorer's taskbar-thread flyouts, StartMenuExperienceHost, SearchHost, ShellExperienceHost, ShellHost, Widgets), and whether any flyout window on the taskbar's thread is visible. When the shell drops the taskbar's topmost flag (which it does while a fullscreen "rude" window is active) the overlay hides.

Build

Run build.cmd. It uses csc.exe from the .NET Framework 4.x that ships with Windows, so no SDK or Visual Studio is needed (the source is deliberately C# 5). make-icon.ps1 generates app.ico if it is missing.