Windows phone 8 How to be always on one theme even if phone's theme changed

Question

My app is generally designed for dark theme, and I'm using StaticResources So if the user changes his phone's theme to light the app gets unreadable and unusable.

I tried to change manually color of each element and avoid using StaticResources and things like:

Style="{StaticResource PhoneTextLargeStyle}"

and StaticResources for font and color. But this is a hard work.

How can I globally change the theme to my app think the phone theme is dark? (it's a windows phone 8 app)

Answer 1

Update : Since the release of Windows Phone 8.1, you can set the RequestedTheme attribute on any control, or even at the app level to override the Theme set by the users in the Settings.

Example to force the Light theme:

In code, within the constructor of the App class :

/// <summary>
/// Provides application-specific behavior to supplement the default Application class.
/// </summary>
public sealed partial class App : Application
{
    private TransitionCollection transitions;

    /// <summary>
    /// Initializes the singleton application object.  This is the first line of authored code
    /// executed, and as such is the logical equivalent of main() or WinMain().
    /// </summary>
    public App()
    {
        this.RequestedTheme = ApplicationTheme.Light;

        this.InitializeComponent();
        this.Suspending += this.OnSuspending;
    }
}

Or in XAML :

<Application
    x:Class="App26.App"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
    RequestedTheme="Light"
    xmlns:local="using:App26">
</Application>

For the old Windows Phone 8 application model :

It is of course recommended in the design guidelines to use the theme resources to make sure your app works with any theme and accent color.

However if you really want to force the dark theme, here is a solution provided by Rudy Huyn on his blog: http://www.rudyhuyn.com/blog/2013/01/18/forcer-un-theme-sous-windows-phone-8/

The idea is to add a method in your App class that will override all the system brushes with the colors of the dark theme:

private void DarkTheme()
{
    ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneRadioCheckBoxCheckBrush"]).Color = ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneRadioCheckBoxBorderBrush"]).Color = ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneForegroundBrush"]).Color = Color.FromArgb(0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF);
    ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneBackgroundBrush"]).Color = Color.FromArgb(0xFF, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00);
    ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneContrastForegroundBrush"]).Color = Color.FromArgb(0xFF, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00);
    ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneContrastBackgroundBrush"]).Color = Color.FromArgb(0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF);
    ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneDisabledBrush"]).Color = Color.FromArgb(0x66, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF);
    ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneProgressBarBackgroundBrush"]).Color = Color.FromArgb(0x19, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF);
    ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneTextCaretBrush"]).Color = Color.FromArgb(0xFF, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00);
    ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneTextBoxBrush"]).Color = Color.FromArgb(0xBF, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF);
    ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneTextBoxForegroundBrush"]).Color = Color.FromArgb(0xFF, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00);
    ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneTextBoxEditBackgroundBrush"]).Color = Color.FromArgb(0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF);
    ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneTextBoxReadOnlyBrush"]).Color = Color.FromArgb(0x77, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00);
    ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneSubtleBrush"]).Color = Color.FromArgb(0x99, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF);
    ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneTextBoxSelectionForegroundBrush"]).Color = Color.FromArgb(0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF);
    ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneButtonBasePressedForegroundBrush"]).Color = Color.FromArgb(0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF);
    ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneTextHighContrastBrush"]).Color = Color.FromArgb(0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF);
    ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneTextMidContrastBrush"]).Color = Color.FromArgb(0x99, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF);
    ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneTextLowContrastBrush"]).Color = Color.FromArgb(0x73, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF);
    ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneSemitransparentBrush"]).Color = Color.FromArgb(0xAA, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00);
    ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneChromeBrush"]).Color = Color.FromArgb(0xFF, 0x1F, 0x1F, 0x1F);

    ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneInactiveBrush"]).Color = Color.FromArgb(0x33, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF);
    ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneInverseInactiveBrush"]).Color = Color.FromArgb(0xFF, 0xCC, 0xCC, 0xCC);
    ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneInverseBackgroundBrush"]).Color = Color.FromArgb(0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF);
    ((SolidColorBrush)Resources["PhoneBorderBrush"]).Color = Color.FromArgb(0xBF, 0xFF, 0xFF, 0xFF);
}

Then, in the App constructor, you check whether the Light theme is enabled, and if it is, you override the theme:

if ((Visibility) Resources["PhoneLightThemeVisibility"] == Visibility.Visible)
{
    DarkTheme();
}

Answer 2

I just wanted to recommend Jeff Wilcox's 'Windows Phone Theme Manager' nuget package as an easy way to implement this functionality for both light and dark themes.

http://www.nuget.org/packages/PhoneThemeManager/

Just add a function call to the App constructor:

ThemeManager.ToDarkTheme();

or

ThemeManager.ToLightTheme();