WCS Registry Keys

WCS uses registry keys to signal that certain color profile events have occurred. Apps should query these registry keys for updated system color profile state.

Active color profile changed

Apps may want to respond to color profile change events for a monitor device; this ensures that they always have accurate color information for their target, even if the user or another app has changed the active profile for the device.

Desktop applications

Desktop apps should listen for changes to the registry to determine when a color profile associations has changed using RegNotifyChangeKeyValue. An app should register both for per-user profile association changes, and for system-wide changes.

RegNotifyChangeKeyValue should be initialized with an HKEY provided by RegOpenKeyEx. RegOpenKeyEx should be initialized using the following registry tree locations:

When the app is notified of a registry key change, it should first query whether per-user or system-wide associations are being used by calling WcsGetUsePerUserProfiles. It should then call WcsGetDefaultColorProfile with the right WCS_PROFILE_MANAGEMENT_SCOPE value to obtain the new active color profile for the monitor. Note that not all registry key changes will correspond to an actual change in the currently active color profile; the app mush check whether the profile returned by WcsGetDefaultColorProfile has actually changed.

Universal Windows (UWP) apps

Universal Windows Apps do not have access to the above registry keys. Instead, they should register a handler for the DisplayInformation.ColorProfileChanged event. This event fires whenever the active color profile for the monitor on which the application is running has changed. ColorProfileChanged takes into account whether per-user or system-wide profile associations are being used; this information is abstracted from UWP apps.

When responding to the ColorProfileChanged event, the app should query the currently active profile using DisplayInformation.GetColorProfileAsync.