Pane

A modern, minimalist Windows UI engine built on WPF. Pane restyles the standard WPF controls into a clean, modern look (inspired by the Claude desktop app), with a custom borderless window chrome, live light/dark theming, and runtime accent-color switching — as a reusable class library and a starter template, not a framework you have to fight.

What's in this repo

• src/Pane — the engine. A WPF class library with themed styles for every common control (buttons, checkboxes, sliders, text input, tabs, menus, tooltips, ...), a ThemeManager for runtime light/dark and accent-color switching, and a PaneWindow base class with custom chrome (drag, minimize/maximize/restore/close, proper multi-monitor maximize).
• src/Pane.Template — a starter WPF app referencing the engine, with a full widget gallery you can trim down to what you need.
• python/ — Python bindings (pip install pane-ui) that build and drive the same native WPF controls in-process via pythonnet, no C# required.

Using it from C#/WPF

<!-- App.xaml -->
<Application.Resources>
    <ResourceDictionary>
        <ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
            <ResourceDictionary Source="pack://application:,,,/Pane;component/Themes/Pane.xaml" />
        </ResourceDictionary.MergedDictionaries>
    </ResourceDictionary>
</Application.Resources>

// App.xaml.cs
protected override void OnStartup(StartupEventArgs e)
{
    base.OnStartup(e);
    ThemeManager.Initialize(PaneTheme.Dark);
}

<!-- MainWindow.xaml -->
<pane:PaneWindow x:Class="MyApp.MainWindow" ...>
    <Button Content="Primary" Style="{StaticResource Pane.Button.Primary}" />
</pane:PaneWindow>

See src/Pane.Template/MainWindow.xaml for a complete example covering every widget.

Build and run the template:

dotnet build Pane.sln
dotnet run --project src/Pane.Template

Using it from Python

pip install pane-ui

import pane

def build(window):
    window.Content = pane.stack(
        pane.text("Hello from Python", size="title", bold=True),
        pane.button("Click me", style="primary", on_click=lambda: print("clicked!")),
        spacing=12, margin=24,
    )

pane.run(build, title="My App")

See python/README.md for the full Python API.

Theming

ThemeManager.SetTheme(PaneTheme.Light);
ThemeManager.SetAccentColor(Color.FromRgb(0x4C, 0x82, 0xF7));

pane.set_theme("light")
pane.set_accent("#4C82F7")

Every widget re-themes live, mid-run — no restart needed either way.

Requirements

• Windows 10/11
• .NET 8 Desktop Runtime (SDK only needed if building from source)
• For the Python bindings: Python 3.9+

License

MIT — see LICENSE.