I’ve tried to upgrade to 3 for Windows, but it breaks my workflow. Without going too much into details, In short, I have a research focus and almost all the text I write is footnoted or commented. Furthermore I change the underlying text color depending on whether the text has been fully vetted or is still in a draft stage. I tried Scrivener 3 a year and a half ago when it came out and then quickly switched back to Scrivener 2 because it broke my workflow as it makes all comments and footnotes blue with an underline.
I can change the color of the highlight, but not the text. Previously footnotes were highlighted gray by Scrivener 2 and comments were yellow while the underlying text itself could be any color. Any suggestions, or should I just return to Scrivener 2? Reading a page of hyperlink blue text isn’t desirable.
There are several options here that govern comment highlight appearance, all found in File ▸ Options... (Win) / Scrivener ▸ Preferences... (Mac), under the Appearance: Textual Marks tab.
Disable Underline links to reduce the visual impact of links in a general way.
In the Colors tab you will find a setting for the global link foreground colour. Something more subtle than hard blue can be used, if you prefer.
And lastly, if you want a much cleaner look and leave regular hyperlink formatting alone: disable the Decorate Comment and Footnote anchors as Links setting. Highlighted text will now simply just look highlighted.
Note to Mac users: this latter setting is only available on Windows, as the Mac text editor is incapable of distinguishing between different types of hyperlink, and thus formatting is always uniform.
!! This might do it. Before I reinstall, though, if I mess with that setting, is it likely to work / cause compatibility problems when bringing up the file on the iOS app since Mac users can’t distinguish between different types of hyperlink (I.e. if Mac users can’t, can iOS users)?
It won’t mess up your iOS editing! These are purely cosmetic adjustments. We try very hard to avoid settings that would actually break compatibility between platforms.
I’ll give it a try, but just to be clear, if I change this cosmetic setting in Scrivener3 for Windows, it will display the same on iOS as on Windows or will it display with the blue underlined hyperlink on iOS? I ask, because by your first reply, I would think it would still show the text with blue underlining on MacOS.
Again, I really appreciate the reply. I’ve used Scrivener for several years to compile and compose a research-based (history, archeology, geography, chemistry) Bible story podcast, and I went to Scrivener3 when it came out, but this formatting issue broke my workflow and has kept me fearful of leaving Scrivener2 behind ever since.
I ask, because by your first reply, I would think it would still show the text with blue underlining on MacOS.
Of course. It would be like changing what your general interface font is, in the Windows version, or the background colour of your corkboard.
Thanks for sharing how Scrivener has been an integral part of how you work, that’s always nice to hear. I think you will like v3 once you get some settings adjusted. It does quite a lot more for note-taking and research in my opinion, than the older version did.
Thank you! That solved it. Also, I appreciate that the footnotes and comments pane in the inspector now does spell check.
I don’t know of another software that makes writing densely footnoted material so straight-forward and much appreciate your efforts to make Scrivener. Thank you.
While writing, it’s important to comment. But I wish to hide a little bit these comments to read the text in the flow. My wish would be to comment in the margins and to hide that comments if i want.
But for the moment is there a way to avoid within the text the blue and underlined format ?
I don’t mean to format the comments in the inspector panel but inside the text just to avoid that hyperlink effect.
Thanks
Hi @AmberV can you please advise how to change the “comment box highlight” when a comment box is selected? (Scrivener for Mac). I’m working on a document with dozens of comments, and I find it difficult to locate the comment in the comments stream as I can’t distinguish the thin-line from the actual comment boxes. I can’t share the actual document here but I made an example:
Yeah, I agree it’s too subtle, but we don’t have a good way of changing that given how it is coded. Basically it is using the system default highlighting, which is what you are supposed to do with things like this. When the inspector tab is active then it uses the accent colour (green, pink, grey, etc.) and when it is inactive it uses grey blended a bit with the background, which makes it even more invisible. You’ll see the exact same effect on the Corkboard, for instance.
It looks like, from the colour of the tab, you are using purple as your accent colour, so to see that instead of the very subtle grey, try using the shortcut that focuses this tab, which you’ll find with the Navigate ▸ Inspect ▸ Footnotes and Comments menu command. This moves the keyboard focus without changing your selection, which you want in this case. You should see a bright purple highlight once you do.
A big improvement they could make is for inactive selections to be a slightly dimmer version of the bright active version, but they seem very set on making things even greyer in the background, in more recent versions of macOS.
