Using GTK on Windows

The Windows port of GTK is an implementation of GDK (and therefore GTK) on top of the Win32 API. When compiling GTK on Windows, this backend is the default.

Windows-specific commandline options

The Windows GDK backend can be influenced with some additional command line arguments.

--sync

Don’t batch GDI requests. This might be a marginally useful option for debugging.

--no-wintab, --ignore-wintab

Don’t use the Wintab API for tablet support.

--use-wintab

Use the Wintab API for tablet support. This is the default.

--max-colors number

In 256 color mode, restrict the size of the color palette to the specified number of colors. This option is obsolete.

Windows-specific environment variables

The Win32 GDK backend can be influenced with some additional environment variables.

GDK_IGNORE_WINTAB

If this variable is set, GTK doesn’t use the Wintab API for tablet support.

GDK_USE_WINTAB

If this variable is set, GTK uses the Wintab API for tablet support. This is the default.

GDK_WIN32_MAX_COLORS

Specifies the size of the color palette used in 256 color mode.

Windows-specific handling of cursors

By default the “system” cursor theme is used. This makes GTK prefer cursors that Windows currently uses, falling back to Adwaita cursors and (as the last resort) built-in X cursors.

When any other cursor theme is used, GTK will prefer cursors from that theme, falling back to Windows cursors and built-in X cursors.

Theme can be changed by setting the gtk-cursor-theme-name GTK setting. Users can override GTK settings in the settings.ini file or at runtime in the GTK Inspector.

Themes are loaded from normal Windows variants of the XDG locations:

• HOME/icons/THEME/cursors
• APPDATA/icons/THEME/cursors
• RUNTIME_PREFIX/share/icons/THEME/cursors

The gtk-cursor-theme-size GTK setting is ignored, GTK will use the cursor size that Windows tells it to use.

More information about GTK on Windows, including detailed build instructions, binary downloads, etc, can be found online.