Windows Sunset Mode Switcher

• Requires: Windows 11, PowerShell 7+ (pwsh.exe), active internet connection
  • Not tested, but this should work for Windows 10 as well.
  • pwsh.exe is currently hardcoded in the task scheduler settings, so modern powershell is a must.
  • This currently requires an internet connection and queries the public sunrise-sunset.org API. No API key required.

About

A simple script that changes the Windows Theme Mode on sunset/sunrise to dark/light respectively.

Installation & Use

1. Move the ps1 script where you want it to reside. (Recommendation: %APPDATA%\windows-theme-mode-switcher\)
2. With an elevated terminal, run the script and pass your latitude and longitude: .\windows-sunset-mode-switcher.ps1 -Lat 47.673 -Long -122.121

Recommended: Windows File Explorer Settings

This change is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. Please read.

In order to enforce the change of mode to the taskbar and other desktop elements, this script restarts the explorer.exe process that manages the desktop. Without doing so, the change to the theme mode will not apply to the taskbar and some other desktop-related elements. I plan to look into how to cause this change without killing processes, but until then...

If the below setting is not enabled, it will close all open file explorer windows as well, which is obviously undesired. (I would recommend this change regardless of whether you choose to use this script: if the desktop crashes, your open File Explorer windows likely won't).

1. Open a File Explorer window (Win+E) and click on the elipses in the top-right, click Options
2. Under the View tab, enable the 'Launch folder windows in a separate process' option and click OK to apply.

Note: that after the change, you will need to restart the explorer.exe process. You can do so in PowerShell with the following command: ps explorer | kill. This will also close any open file explorer windows.

Note 2: Any open file explorer windows will also appear incorrectly after a theme mode change. New file explorer windows will appear correctly.

Most Recent Update

Version 3.1 - 2023-10-08

• Added -Uninstall switch and capability.
• Added -PrincipalUserId to allow the task to be created under a different account.
• Created parameter sets in anticipation of future options.

Roadmap

• Offline sunset calculation
  • Either through my own functions or via an external library, it would be beneficial to have the option to calculate offline. This is a privacy feature in addition to a redundancy feature.
• Graceful Mode Switching
  • Need to find how to change the mode w/o killing explorer.exe.
• Misc Improvements
  • Reduce API calls.
• Fire on Resume/Run Next When Missed
  • There's a way to do the latter by using XML to create scheduled tasks.
  • A fourth task for running on resume may not be a bad idea regardless.