Terminal: Opacity is not working; the terminal remains always opaque

[TheBlueSky]

Whatever value I set my terminal opacity to, it remains opaque.

On the other hand, I can set the opacity of the "normal" or the "bundled" Command Prompt and Powershell with no Windows issue.

Environment

Windows build number: Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.18362.175]
Windows Terminal version (if applicable): 0.2.1715.0

CPU
    Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz

GPU
    NVIDIA GeForce GT 710
    Driver version: 25.21.14.2531
    Driver date: 09/04/2019
    DirectX version: 12 (FL 11.0)
    Physical location: PCI bus 5, device 0, function 0

Steps to reproduce

• Launch Windows Terminal on my machine :)
• Go to Settings; Ctrl+,
• Set acrylicOpacity to a value that is less than 1; e.g., 0.75 or 0.5

Expected behaviour

The window becomes semi-transparent.

Actual behaviour

The window is still opaque.

[Aulos]

Try setting useAcrylic to true

[TheBlueSky]

@Aulos, thanks; haven't noticed the useAcrylic setting.

[fde-capu]

Looking for simple transparency. Would it possible to implement parameter options for each Acrylic layer?

[MPeti1]

Looking for simple transparency. Would it possible to implement parameter options for each Acrylic layer?

Well it seems at Microsoft they are not willing to have any kind of opacaity other than acrylic. As far as I know the old opacity effects can't be reactivated, not even with registry hacks

[DHowett-MSFT]

not willing

If we weren’t willing, we would have closed #603 instead of leaving it open as the workitem tracking the request for traditional transparency.

[MPeti1]

@DHowett-MSFT I'm not speaking of just this project. It's in beta, so it's not I speak of Windows too. You (or probably an other team working on an other part of the OS) took out the traditional transparency to put in the acrylic one. Why did you do that?

Edit: removed PS. The problem is still there, but it's probably caused by something else much deeper in the OS

[zadjii-msft]

took out the traditional transparency to put in the acrylic one. Why did you do that?

Uh, no, we never took out the traditional transparency option. That's left totally unchanged in the vintage console host. We just haven't had the time to implement traditional opacity in a good fashion in the Terminal quite yet. That's the whole point of #603 - we _want_ to add that functionality, but we'd rather not just do it in the janky "make the entire UI transparent like conhost did"

[MPeti1]

@zadjii-msft It seems I badly edited my comment. Or the GitHub app I use saved my edit badly

In that sentence I asked about Windows 10, not Windows Terminal

[nathan-fiscaletti]

The issue with Acrylic is that the transparency seems to go away when the window loses focus. Is there a way to fix this?

[Gonkers]

The acrylic options seem partially broken and or lackluster. Acrylic only seems to work when the window is in focus. In addition there does not appear to be a blur intensity setting. I would prefer to have nearly crystal clear like the classic terminal

I would actually use that as a feature to read text from a background window

[DHowett-MSFT]

@Gonkers I believe these things were already covered in the thread above you. Thanks for your input!

[Gonkers]

Sure thanks for the acknowledgement, but I guess the other part of the issue is a #WontFix https://github.com/microsoft/terminal/issues/593

Clearly this is a hot button issue. Sorry for wasting your time, I should have worked more on my google fu. Keep up the good fight. @DHowett-MSFT

[DHowett-MSFT]

(We definitely want to support materials that don’t have the blur, or materials that stay visible when the window is inactive, but there’s only so many hours in a day. :smile:)