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I have developed a program with glut library and want to remove its title bar.

Since its impossible to remove the title bar from glut library I have to use an external tool to remove its title bar.

Regarding the fact that it is possible to manipulate other windows decoration in Windows operating system I hope to find a similar remedy for this obstacle.

Do you have any Idea about how to remove specific window title bar with a script or a simple X11 application ?

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2
  • Window managers can also manipulate the window decorations in certain degree. With IceWM you can put a line in ~/.icewm/winoptions yourWindow.dTitleBar: 0. – manatwork Dec 2 '13 at 12:40
  • A window's title bar is drawn and managed by the window manager, not by applications. Window managers decide things like whether to display a title bar based on ICCCM hints or their modern derivatives. I don't think you can control this in a way that's independent of both the application and the window manager. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Dec 2 '13 at 23:32
11

Wmctrl

This is kind of related but you could change the text in the title bar of this mystery application using the command wmctrl.

Example

Say I ran the application gvim. It shows up as follows when I list the open windows.

$  wmctrl -l
0x04402eed -1 grinchy N/A
0x00c00003 -1 grinchy Bottom Expanded Edge Panel
0x00c00028 -1 grinchy Top Expanded Edge Panel
0x0120001e  0 grinchy x-nautilus-desktop
0x02a00004  0 grinchy saml@grinchy:~
0x06800003  0 grinchy [No Name] - GVIM

So the gvim window has the title "[No Name] - GVIM", we can change its name like so, again using wmctrl:

$ wmctrl -r "[No Name] - GVIM" -N "new name"

Running the -l switch again we can see the new name:

$ wmctrl -l
0x04402eed -1 grinchy N/A
0x00c00003 -1 grinchy Bottom Expanded Edge Panel
0x00c00028 -1 grinchy Top Expanded Edge Panel
0x0120001e  0 grinchy x-nautilus-desktop
0x02a00004  0 grinchy saml@grinchy:~
0x06800003  0 grinchy new name

All decorations

There is this method discussed in this AskUbuntu Q&A titled: Can I hide the title bar of MPlayer in gnome?.

There was this gist of Python - window-toggle-decorations.py that looked to do kind of what you wanted. It might be modifiable to suit your needs.

window-toggle-decorations.py

#! /usr/bin/python2
import gtk.gdk
w = gtk.gdk.window_foreign_new( gtk.gdk.get_default_root_window().property_get("_NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW")[2][0] )
w.set_decorations( (w.get_decorations()+1)%2 ) # toggle between 0 and 1
gtk.gdk.window_process_all_updates()
gtk.gdk.flush()

# now bind this to super-r or something
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3
  • Wow ! it worked ! It should be run in this way : python2 ./toggle.py. I haven't seen something like that and at least now I have a clue to the answer. Thank you Smart Looking Man(slm). – Sponge Comrade Dec 3 '13 at 5:27
  • I tested it with a system("python2 ./toggle.py") call and it worked too, however I'm sure its code is convertible to C++. – Sponge Comrade Dec 3 '13 at 6:09
  • Strange thing is that I have to call it two times to effect!!! system("python2 ./toggle.py"); system("python2 ./toggle.py"); it is ridiculous ! but it works for me and it is enough :D – Sponge Comrade Dec 3 '13 at 6:14
7

There is a simple C program that works, originally developed by Muktupavels.

I use it and it works very well. It's here

https://gist.github.com/cat-in-136/96ee8e96e81e0cc763d085ed697fe193

It lets you toggle the title bar on and off for any given application.

To use it, simply make sure you have the libx11-dev library installed

sudo apt-get install -y libx11-dev

then compile the code using this command

gcc toggle-decorations.c -Wall -o toggle-decorations `pkg-config --cflags --libs x11`

and run it with this command

./toggle-decorations $(wmctrl -lx | grep -E "name_of_your_application_here" | grep -oE "[0-9a-z]{10}")

where $(...) captures the --id of your application using wmctrl.

I did not do this great work and take no credit for it.

It was done by muktupavels.

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2
  • the only thing that worked on Unity/compiz thx! – Aquarius Power Jan 11 '19 at 18:46
  • This is the only thing I got to work on xfce/xubuntu for vlc – poleguy Jan 29 at 15:47
1

For those who don't want to compile anything and only use stock programs :

xprop -name 'My window name' -format _MOTIF_WM_HINTS 32i -set _MOTIF_WM_HINTS 2

Replace My window name with the name of your window, or you can omit the -name option, and the program will ask you to click on the window where you want the decorations removed.

In fact I didn't know how to do that, until I had a look at Muktupavels' C program ;)

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