1368808 - Respect Windows 10 Dark / Light color settings

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Core :: Widget: Win32, defect, P3)

Description

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto [:gcp]]

Windows 10, current Nightly

After bug 1367384 the Firefox titlebar looks wrong and alien compared to every other Windows application. All other apps use light grey or white, and Firefox is dark grey/black.

After some fiddling in Windows, I found Settings->Color->More Options->Choose Default App Mode

This is currently set to "Light". I think this is the default - I don't remember changing it.

When I set this to "Dark", Windows' own windows and other software such as Edge uses a dark titlebar, close but not exactly the same as Firefox. It looks like this setting is what the Firefox design was intended to match.

But when it is set to "Light", Firefox is, incorrectly, Dark.

Comment 1

[Adolfo Jayme]

The title bar is intended to be dark by default, which IMHO is a great default (making Firefox match Windows settings for Light/Dark modes is reported already as bug 1176577). And you can’t really argue that one app should abide to “all other apps”* in Windows 10 — any app, especially if it’s UWP, can color its title bar differently to the rest: the MSN apps News and Money, for example, use very vivid colors instead of the default white. IMHO, this bug is invalid.

* By “all other apps”, I suspect, you’re referring to legacy Win32 programs, not something to follow when it comes to design in Windows 10…

Comment 2

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

This is working as designed, but we'll likely get a good amount of similar complaints. Stephen, can you please comment / resolve as appropriate? Thanks.

Comment 3

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto [:gcp]]

Bug 1176577 is now rather amusing, and I think the switch referred to in it is now exposed in Windows 10.

What are you going to do when the user selects the dark theme? Make the titlebar white?

>And you can’t really argue that one app should abide to “all other apps”* in Windows 10

I think I can argue that if I select a light theme, I expect a light theme.

Comment 4

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to Gian-Carlo Pascutto [:gcp] from comment #3)
> Bug 1176577 is now rather amusing, and I think the switch referred to in it
> is now exposed in Windows 10.
> 
> What are you going to do when the user selects the dark theme? Make the
> titlebar white?

No.

> >And you can’t really argue that one app should abide to “all other apps”* in Windows 10
> 
> I think I can argue that if I select a light theme, I expect a light theme.

The thing is that light is the default, so we can't necessarily infer user intent from that.

Comment 5

[Peter L Jones]

I've never really understood the need for per-application theming, Luddite that I am...

Firefox Nightly offers me three built-in themes: "Default", "Light" and "Dark".  But I don't want application-specific theming - I want my platform look-n-feel.  Hm.  I choose "Default" in the hope that's what that means: unthemed.  But no, it's not: rather than "default" looking through to the platform to create itself (tricky, I guess), it's still just a preset like the others - sort of half-n-half dark and light.  Dark menu bar, light toolbar...

Screen shots are available in bug 1369884 but I guess everyone knows this.

Comment 6

[Stephen Horlander [:shorlander]]

We could respect the system Dark / Light settings, like we do for picking up the Title Bar color system setting, but probably not for 57. I think there might even be a bug about that already?

What we have now are essentially four settings:

+-------------------+
|Automatic          |
+-------------------+
|Light on Dark      |
+-------------------+
|Light              |
+-------------------+
|Dark               |
+-------------------+

Automatic being the out of the box setting that defaults to Light on Dark, but that respects some system settings like Title Bar accent color and High Contrast mode.

We only list three options now though: Default, Light and Dark

I think should just make it more explicit and add Automatic as the default and selecting another option would override that.

Comment 7

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to Stephen Horlander [:shorlander] from comment #6)
> We could respect the system Dark / Light settings, like we do for picking up
> the Title Bar color system setting, but probably not for 57.

Okay, moving this to the reserve.

> I think there might even be a bug about that already?

Bug 1176577.

Comment 9

[Maxim]

How to set light tabs in FF on Windows 7?
Maybe some options in about:config?

I cannot use FF with such dark colors at all.
It is to much contrast to other elements on a page.
Mostly all pages are white (containing some text/image information on light background).

Comment 10

[Johann Hofmann [:johannh]]

(In reply to Maxim from comment #9)
> How to set light tabs in FF on Windows 7?
> Maybe some options in about:config?
> 
> I cannot use FF with such dark colors at all.
> It is to much contrast to other elements on a page.
> Mostly all pages are white (containing some text/image information on light
> background).

There is a light theme available under Hamburger Menu > Customize > Themes.

Comment 12

[Stephen A Pohl [:spohl]]

Once bug 1466335 lands, the only thing needed here is to write a Windows-specific patch for widget/windows/nsLookAndFeel.cpp equivalent to the changes to widget/cocoa/nsLookAndFeel.mm in attachment 8986234 [details] [diff] [review] to detect when the OS is in dark mode.

Comment 13

[Molly Howell (she/her) (no longer active)]

This is a little outside my usual area, but I really want us to have this feature, and right now we can still be among the first to get it. So I decided to just go for it over this weekend, and I came up with something that seems to work. Patch and try push incoming shortly.

Comment 14

[Molly Howell (she/her) (no longer active)]

https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try&revision=df740510319af4192139cf1922ae8eda2bf4ff7d

Comment 15

[Molly Howell (she/her) (no longer active)]

Attachment: Bug 1368808 - Honor the system light/dark mode setting on Windows 10.

Review commit: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/255714/diff/#index_header
See other reviews: https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/255714/

Comment 16

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

Comment on attachment 8990637 [details]
Bug 1368808 - Honor the system light/dark mode setting on Windows 10.

https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/255714/#review262628

Comment 17

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/48bb14249b06
Honor the system light/dark mode setting on Windows 10. r=jimm

Comment 18

[Andreea Pavel [:apavel]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/48bb14249b06

Comment 19

[Pascal Chevrel:pascalc (PTO until April 26)]

Looks like something we may want to mention in 63 release notes, Matt could you nominate this bug for addition please? Thanks (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Release_Management/Release_Notes#How_to_nominate_a_bug_for_release_notes_addition.3F)

Comment 20

[Molly Howell (she/her) (no longer active)]

Release Note Request (optional, but appreciated)
[Why is this notable]:
This is new platform integration functionality that might surprise users if they see their theme change, and that very few (if any) Win32 applications are currently supporting.

[Affects Firefox for Android]:
No, this is Windows only.

[Suggested wording]:
Firefox now respects the Windows 10 dark mode setting. If you're already using a custom theme, don't worry, we won't change it.

[Links (documentation, blog post, etc)]:
Microsoft blog post explaining the dark mode setting:
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/08/08/windows-10-tip-personalize-your-pc-by-enabling-the-dark-theme/

Comment 21

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(We probably want to relnote this together with bug 1466335, which was the macOS 10.14 version of this.)

Comment 22

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #21)
> (We probably want to relnote this together with bug 1466335, which was the
> macOS 10.14 version of this.)

Bug 1466335 is in a different release (62) so that it works when macOS 10.14 is out (which also makes relnoting somewhat moot; see bug 1466335 comment 38.)

Comment 23

[roxleitan]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:63.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/63.0
Build ID: 20180722220044

I reproduced this issue on Windows 10 x64 (Version 10.0.17134) with Nightly 63.0a1(2018-07-08).
The issue is verified fixed on the latest Nightly 63.0a1( 2018-07-22).

Tested also:
Dark OS theme -> Light FF theme, Dark FF theme
Light OS theme-> Dark FF theme; Default FF theme

Comment 24

[Pascal Chevrel:pascalc (PTO until April 26)]

Added to Nightly 63 release notes with this wording: 
Improved Windows 10 integration: your Firefox theme now matches your OS Dark / Light mode

Comment 25

[ross]

How does one disable this feature? 

Firefox titlebar and tab bar is now pitch black rather than respecting my Windows accent color(dark gray). There is also no change in color between active/inactive windows. 

If I set the Firefox theme to default, it's the same as the dark Firefox theme. If I set the Windows theme to "Light" then the Firefox default theme goes back to using the Windows accent color. 

Windows 10 Pro x64 with the latest October update
Firefox 63 64 bit
Windows 10 dark theme enabled

Comment 26

[ross]

To add to that: When I hover over "Default" when selecting a Firefox theme, the colors go back to exactly how they should be: Window accent titlebar and a light grey toolbar otherwise. The moment I click "Default" it reverts back to the all black theme.

Comment 27

[ross]

And to add to that: I tried installing the addon from color.firefox.com to try and create a better looking theme in the mean time. When I removed the addon, the theme went back to how I it was prior to version 63 until I restarted Firefox.

Comment 28

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Please file new bugs on any issues you found.

Comment 29

[jan]

This is broken for me as well, when I select the default theme the titlebar turns black, still looks good when I just hover over it.
Every other application respects my win10 setting of having a green titlebar, which is what firefox used to do also.
I have no way to reset this back, because the light theme just has a light grey titlebar, which is not what I want either.

Comment 30

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to jan from comment #29)
> This is broken for me as well, when I select the default theme the titlebar
> turns black, still looks good when I just hover over it.

That's by design for now and filed as bug 1474591.

> Every other application respects my win10 setting of having a green
> titlebar, which is what firefox used to do also.

We should get a separate bug filed specifically for the dark theme to use the system's title bar color if this is indeed how apps are supposed to behave in dark mode.