1625695 - Make the light-on-dark theme available when the OS is set to dark mode

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Theme, enhancement)

Description

[Chris Barrick]

Description

Users who set their OS to light mode have three theme choices:

• light-on-dark
• light
• dark

Users who set their OS to dark mode only have two theme choices:

• light
• dark

In both cases, the UI presents three options:

• Default (light-on-dark for light mode users, dark for dark mode users)
• Light
• Dark

So dark mode users do not have access to the light-on-dark theme.

We can correct this by presenting four choices:

• Default (determined by the OS settings)
• Light
• Dark
• Hybrid (i.e. light-on-dark)

Use Cases

Previous discussions around this problem have met some resistance. From a comment in bug #1474591:

First of all I would suggest you shouldn't use the macOS Mojave dark theme if you don't want apps to be dark.

This is a false assumption that Firefox should not be making. In fact, macOS has advanced preferences to set the builtin apps and icons to a light theme while only using the dark theme for the menu bar and dock (more info). This was the default behavior in macOS 10.13. However, it appears to downstream apps that the user is in "dark mode".

And this is exactly my use case. I set the OS to dark mode occasionally so that my menu bar and dock will match my wallpaper, but I explicitly revert all of my apps to their light theme. When I change my wallpaper, I may change my menu bar color, but I don't want all of my apps changing out from under me. And I want to use Firefox's light-on-dark theme.

Theme preferences are inherently personal, and it should not be the case that a theme choice in Firefox is taken away because of a theme choice made in the OS. Some of us like a hybrid between light and dark.

Related Issues

This issue has been identified in a few previous bugs:

• Bug #1466335 - Automatically enable the dark theme in macOS 10.14 dark mode
• Bug #1474591 - Clarify default theme description ("Light on Dark" theme is no longer selectable when OS is in Dark mode)

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The bug has a release status flag that shows some version of Firefox is affected, thus it will be considered confirmed.