Syncing label colors between Scrivener and Aeon Timeline 3

Scrivener
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Because I write with Scrivener and Aeon Timeline 3 (AT3) open and displayed side by side, having the color labels match in both programs is more than aesthetics–it’s important to my workflow because the colors give me a quick visual cue that I’m looking at the right scene in AT3 while writing/reviewing that scene in Scrivener.

Though AT3 syncs beautifully with Scrivener, it does not sync the label colors. For example, in AT3, I have added chapter labels to certain colors. So Chapter 1 is the color red, Chapter 2 the color green, and so on. When I sync AT3 to Scrivener, Scrivener displays these labels (the text and the color) in the lower right and also as colored icons in the Binder–but the colors don’t match.

I observe that Scrivener exposes the colors’ RGB values (such as #73c619) whereas AT3 presents colors without exposing the RGB values. In any case, AT3 does not sync what would be AT3’s RGB value of a given color to the corresponding color value in Scrivener.

I don’t know if this will be addressed in a future release of AT, but I found a workaround in the meantime. In case it’s helpful for anyone else (I also posted this on the Aeon Timeline forum), here’s how I did it:

  1. I downloaded and installed a free color picker app (there are several, just Google for them).
  2. In AT3, I opened settings (the gear icon in the upper right) and opened the Colors tab. I hovered the color picker over a label color and wrote down its RGB value (such as #73c619).
  3. In Scrivener, I navigated to Project > Project Settings > Label List. I updated the corresponding label’s color to the same value (#73c619). I iterated through all of the colors/labels in this manner.

This workaround satisfies my need to have the colors match, but it took time away from writing. I’m not complaining because I finally got the colors to match, so the problem is solved. Still, it would be helpful if AT could properly sync colors to Scrivener. I’ve put in a feature request to the good folks developing Aeon Timeline. Maybe the good folks here who develop Scrivener could get together with the good folks at Aeon Timeline and find a way to sync the colors. :slight_smile:

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