Is it possible to remove/hide Windows title bars?

Question

I'm very used to my Linux desktop, but in my new job I'm forced to use Windows. For efficiency, I'm veeery used to minimize/maximize using keyboard shortcuts and move/resize windows using alt+mouse. Thus, window titlebars and borders are useless, and I can remove them using Compiz.

My question is: is this remotely possible to be done in Windows Vista? I could manage to quite reduce the borders and title font (minimum is still big, 17pt), but the titlebars still bother me. I also found that Win+M minimizes a window, and I think that would help with the shortcuts also.

No, I'm not looking for a way to hide a titlebar when needed, as explained in the said duplicated question "Windows program to remove titlebar, frame, etc from a window?". I want to preferently remove all titlebars and frames, from all windows, at once. Furthermore, AHK is quite hackish, since I need to write a full blown script to make that work. Isn't there any better solutions in Windows? That's the reason of this question.

As a help to understand how I'm used to live, here's a completely normal [reduced] window of my home computer:

window with no title/borders http://i.imm.io/1jgiY.png

Solution 1

In XP, Vista, and Windows 7 you can adjust the size of the various window decorations.

In Windows 7, the menu to do so is slightly hidden. Right-click on the desktop, to get

Then select Personalize -> Window Color -> Advanced appearance settings..., to get

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Update:

As an example, you can reduce the title bar height to 5 pixels, as shown in the snapshot below. I haven't yet discovered how to reduce it to 0 pixels, as requested by the OP. This change also affects parts of the taskbar, which may be a downside.

Solution 2

[Note, you will need to sign-out and sign-in to windows after applying the below changes]

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A) Regedit-approach:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\

Also, it has subfolders:

• Colors (for setting colors)
• WindowMetrics (for sizes/etc, use. One note (according to this source) is that to set height of any element, like CaptionHeight, you should use this formula: -15 * Desired_Height_in_Pixels. So, if you want 10px height, set 15*10--> 150

B) Using WinAero Tweaker

Also, I've found Win Aero Tweaker ( 3+ million downloads), which has an easy user-interface to set all sorts of things.

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Comments

[Nấm Lùn]

you can see by my own question that I've got there already, changing the borders - forgot to mention about the title bar. But 17pt for that font is still so much useless space. I want to remove it, as stated in the question :)

[Nấm Lùn]

Thanks for the edit. However, that does not work on Windows Vista. The minimum here is 17.

[Joseph Quinsey]

Unfortunately, my Vista machine is now disassembled and collecting dust. However in the Windows 7 example, to get the 5 pixel height, I also needed to change the font to Small Fonts and set its size to the minimum allowed, 2.

[Nấm Lùn]

I'll try that tomorrow! And it's good to know your Vista machine is collecting dust (:

[Nấm Lùn]

I tried that, and a side effect of reducing the title bar that way is the tray icons getting smaller as well! Putting the same settings as your last screenshot makes the taskbar useless, with such small icons it gets half of the width and you can't even read what the apps are open...