---
name: Title bar
slug: title-bar
category: component
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
definition: The strip along the top of a window carrying its title and window
  controls, and the region you drag to move the window.
aliases:
  - name: window title bar
    source: community
  - name: titlebar
    source: community
  - name: unified title bar
    source: hig
  - name: caption bar
    source: community
tags:
  - platform-registers
  - windowing
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - window-controls
    - page-header
    - app-bar
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso:
    - toolbar
    - chrome
implementations: []
sources:
  - title: Traffic Lights (Window Controls), NameThatUI
    url: https://namethatui.com/macos/traffic-lights
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: the draggable strip at the top of a window
---

A title bar does three jobs at once and is usually credited with only the first. It names
the window, so a row of them in a task switcher can be told apart. It carries the window
controls at one end. And it is the handle: the operating system treats the whole strip,
minus the controls, as the region a drag moves the window by, which is why a bar with no
empty space left in it is a window nobody can move.

[Window controls](/window-controls) are the buttons, the title bar is the strip that
carries them, and the difference matters as soon as an application draws its own. A
[toolbar](/toolbar) is the other neighbour, and the two are distinguished by who owns the
commands: a toolbar holds actions that act on the document, while the title bar belongs to
the window manager and acts on the window. A unified bar is what a platform gets when it
merges those two strips into one, putting the document's tools and the window's name on a
single line. It buys back a whole strip of vertical space, and it costs the drag region
that space used to provide, so a unified bar has to keep some of itself empty on purpose.

The bar is also where a window says whether it is the one you are talking to. An inactive
window dims its title, its controls, and often the bar's own fill, while the content below
stays legible. That dimming is a real signal rather than decoration: on a desktop covered
in overlapping windows it is frequently the only thing distinguishing the window that will
receive the next keystroke from the four behind it. Dim the bar, never the document.

Because it is the first thing drawn and the last thing customised, the title bar is where
platform style shows itself most plainly: the striped, glossy lozenges of [Aqua](/aqua),
the translucent [Mica](/mica) backdrop tinted by the desktop behind it, the chiselled grey
caption bars that [retro web design](/retro-web-design) reaches for when it wants a page to
look like a 1998 application. Web apps that draw a title bar of their own inherit the whole
contract with it, including the part where a reader expects to be able to grab it.