Question

Is it possible to make a BrowserWindow, in electron, transparent with blur? In that it blurs all background content, including apps and the wallpaper.

And if possible, how would I accomplish this?

Examples

Here are some code I've tried.
index.js:

let win = new BrowserWindow({
    fullscreen: true,
    fullscreenable: false,
    frame: false,
    skipTaskbar: true,
    resizable: false,
    movable: false,
    show: false,
    alwaysOnTop: true,
    transparent: true
})

style.css:

html, body {
    width: 100vw;
    height: 100vh;
    margin: 0;
    padding: 0;
    background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5);
    color: rgb(255, 255, 255);
    backdrop-filter: blur(4px);
}

The html is just a body with a h1 tag with text in it.
Although this only creates a black background in the window.

I read something about this:

webPreferences: {
    experimentalFeatures: true
}

But can't get it to work.

Environment

• Ubuntu: 18.04.2
• Node: v10.15.3
• npm: 6.4.1
• i3wm. 4.14.1

I have compton running. Maybey it has to do with that. Or the compositing engine in general?

Thanks in advance!

electron-acrylic-window

Actually, it is possible, with a little bit of magic. I have no idea why nobody pointed that out, but there exists a small utility called electron-acrylic-window, which allows you to do exactly that. You can choose between the acrylic ("frosted") and blur effects, as well as change the color of the window and the opacity.

Under the hood, it uses node-gyp and low-level C++ code to render the page however you like. It's pretty easy to implement in JavaScript.

Drawbacks

• Anything that is remotely transparent (and not above anything with a solid color) will be rendered as totally transparent
• The severe performance impact should be noted as well. You should enable this in your app only after prompting the user or verifying the computing power of the machine on which all this will run
• It might also not be compatible with programs that change the behavior of the desktop (ie Wallpaper Engine, Transparent/RoundedTB, ...)
• Compatibility with other EcmaScript/TypeScript runners (like Bun) might be difficult
• As the lib is not used a lot, it has a higher chance to be abandoned or deprecated in the future

Sample usage

index.js

import { BrowserWindow } from 'electron-acrylic-window'; // ESM
// const { BrowserWindow } = require('electron-acrylic-window'); // CommonJS

const win = new BrowserWindow({
    ...,
    frame: false,
    vibrancy: {
        theme: 'light', // (default) or 'dark' or '#rrggbbaa'
        effect: 'acrylic', // (default) or 'blur'
        disableOnBlur: true, // (default)
    }
});

// alternatively use these to
// dynamically change vibrancy
win.setVibrancy([options])
// or
setVibrancy(win, [options])

style.css

body {
    background-color: transparent;
}

.foo {
    background-color: black;
}