Black text on dark background in dark mode

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
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1

Hi,

Sorry, this is a really basic question, but I’ve been a Scrivener user for years, and it’s the first time I’ve experienced this issue.

When I select a dark theme, the text in the main editor remains dark (so it’s almost black on black). I can’t see a way to change this - there is no “text” option in Appearance > Main editor, only a picker to change the background.

Thanks,

Gareth.

2

Have you, by any chance, set a text colour using the formatting bar? If you have select the text and then choose the white square with a red diagonal line (No Colour) as that should make it automatically contrast with the background.

Not at my Mac to post screenshots.

:slight_smile:
Mark

3

Click inside the Editor and click on the text color. Once do this for the document, then make this default text format and convert rest of project to this and that should correct the problem.

image

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4

Are you certain you are in fact in Dark Mode, and not just using a theme that has some dark backgrounds? The most obvious sign is whether the parts around these areas are bright white or not, like the toolbars and footer bars in the main window, never mind the preferences window itself, which should look like this:

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5

I can’t seem to access dark mode (there’s no appearance option on the menu), so themes are all I have. This is on my laptop, which is running OS 10.13, if that’s an issue. On the desktop, it works fine - I can see light and dark mode under appearance.

6

Okay, that explains it. Apple introduced Dark Mode with 10.14, so yeah, there is nothing for Scrivener to use on your system to do dark mode correctly. And, unfortunately it was decided that light mode users have no need for cosmetic text colours, on Mac anyway. That does limit what background colours you can effectively use.

7

Oh, I see. So I can’t use the darker themes with a lighter text, and I don’t have access to proper dark mode? I could try updating to 10.14 - if my laptop can handle it! Would that solve it?

Thank you, Amber.

8

Yup, that’s what you need to make those themes work the way they were meant to. Any version past 10.14 will give you that.

1 Like
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Thanks, Amber. I’ll try that.