1843646 - Thunderbird 115 doesn't respect system colors

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Theme, defect)

Description

[Christian [:Rochusberg]]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/114.0.0.0 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

Install a fresh Thunderbird 115 with a new profile under Linux (Debian Bullseye or Kubuntu 22.04 or Tudexo OS alias KDE neon with KDE desktop and a different theme of your choice).
Start Thunderbird 115 with default Theme "System theme - auto".

Actual results:

While all previous versions of Thunderbird including latest 102.13 respects the system colors in all elements of the UI and so integrates perfectly in the desktop like any other GTK or Qt application, Thunderbird 115 does not respect the system colors.
I see a lot of different gray shades - yes, we can speak of "50 shades of gray" - nearly all of the UI elements does not match any of the system colors.
Only a few number of UI elements are looking as expected, e.g. the Tasks field in the today pane or the events list in the Calendar page. That's it. Any other elements are using different gray shades, which are completely different to the colors in my system (using KDE with Arc Dark theme), that are perfectly used by any other GTK and Qt application, including Thunderbird 102.13.
This looks absolutely horrible.
It does not help to install another theme from the Thunderbird theme website, Thunderbird also does not really respect the colors of the theme for most of the UI elements.

Expected results:

When using the default "System theme" which is explicitly described as "Follow the operating system setting for buttons, menus and windows", Thunderbird 115 should really meats the system colors like any other GTK or Qt application including any previous Thunderbird version.

Comment 1

[Christian [:Rochusberg]]

Attachment: Thunderbird should looks like this. this is Thunderbird 102.13, which uses the system colors correctly like any other GTK/Qt application

Comment 2

[Christian [:Rochusberg]]

Attachment: This is Thunderbird 115 looks like, nearly all of the UI elements are ignoring the system colors

Comment 3

[Christian [:Rochusberg]]

Since numerous other problems have surfaced with Thunderbird 115 in the meantime, and since I don't assume that the problem will be fixed in the foreseeable future, I am now back to 102.13.1, which works and is stable for the most part and looks suitable for the desktop. In the meantime, I would have to create a lot of bug tickets for the 115.... :(

Comment 5

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

This was a deliberate design decision to better respect and maintain the Thunderbird Design System and visual identity consistent across OSs and DEs.
We understand how this visual change can be jarring and annoying, but it was necessary for us to simplify our themeing support and guarantee a consistent result.
Without enforcing our brand guidelines, it would be impossible to guarantee AAA readability and a11y in any color combination (default, dark, high-contrast mode) alongside any Linux DE themeing and Window manager.
It has always been very difficult to maintain that visual support in 102 and prior.

We're still improving our themeing and we're working extra hard to more easily allow add-on developers to style Thunderbird through a theme. There's already an add-on to make Thunderbird look almost GNOME native. I'm sure with time themes to make TB better compatible with breeze (or any other KDE theme) will appear.

If you want, you can enable the system titlebar in Settings > General > Language & Appereance and uncheck Hide system window titlebar. That should make KWin style the window decoration properly.

Comment 6

[Christian [:Rochusberg]]

Thanks for your answer. So, now I know, I can stop hoping for a tolerable looking version of Thunderbird in the near future :(

One thing is a Thunderbird, which does not respect system colors und does not look like any other (!) application running on my system. The other thing is, that this new Thunderbird partially shows completely different, unmatching colors, but partially uses the system colors. This is not only annoying, this is simply ugly.

To turn on the system window titlebar is not a good option and also a native GNOME look does not help while not running GNOME. So, for the next months (or years?) I will stay at Thunderbird 102 and then, i think, after all these many many years with Thunderbird, now it's probably time to look for another mail client (and no, it's not just for the looks).

Comment 7

[Christian [:Rochusberg]]

To quote from the other site:

There are currently no plans to add back support for linux system colors.

There are too many variations of linux and often user's colors choices interfere with the proper operation of Thunderbird, which causes support requests and bug reports.

This is a complete mistake and shows a gross lack of understanding about Linux desktops and Linux applications.

Normally, the vast majority of Linux applications simply support the general standard, namely GTK. That is actually the common denominator. I estimate that over 90% of all Linux applications adhere to it. And the vast majority of Linux desktops are also based on GTK.

I am one of the users of the KDE desktop, which is not based on GTK, but on Qt. But even here it's not a problem, because KDE has been automatically transferring its design to a GTK base for ages, so that GTK applications also look under KDE as if they were based on Qt.

But thank you very much for your link, so now I definitely know that I will never upgrade beyond Thunderbird 102. I feel this wrong decision absolutely frustrating.

Comment 8

[Christian [:Rochusberg]]

One more thing: why do you call the default theme "System theme - auto" while it deliberately does not use the system colours? If as described above, then please remove this theme and only give the user the choice between dark and light. That would at least be consistent and honest.

By the way: Firefox perfectly respects the system colours in the theme "System theme - auto" even in the latest version 116.0.2.

Comment 9

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Normally, the vast majority of Linux applications simply support the general standard, namely GTK. That is actually the common denominator. I estimate that over 90% of all Linux applications adhere to it. And the vast majority of Linux desktops are also based on GTK.

This statement is completely anecdotal and based on made up numbers.
You obviously don't get exposed to support requests like "Properly handle the Dracula theme on Plasma as the accent color makes the message list icons unreadable".
Once again, the reasons is this:

Without enforcing our brand guidelines, it would be impossible to guarantee AAA readability and a11y in any color combination (default, dark, high-contrast mode) alongside any Linux DE themeing and Window manager.

Themes developers are more than welcome to create a theme that respects a specific Desktop Environment with a unique GTK or KDE theme, and there are themes in our repository that do that already.
For the Thunderbird out of the box experience, we're aiming at readability and accessibility!
Customizing it the way users want is always supported and welcomed, to the point that the new UI is even more easily customizable with a few CSS variables. We just don't have the resources and time to support every single variation, and it's more sustainable to defer this kind of support to custom themes.

One more thing: why do you call the default theme "System theme - auto" while it deliberately does not use the system colours? If as described above, then please remove this theme and only give the user the choice between dark and light. That would at least be consistent and honest.

That string comes from Firefox, we will need to rebuild the themeing tab in the future.
"System theme" stands for automatic switching between light and dark mode depending on the OS settings. I agree, the name is a bit misleading and we will need to fix when we can.

By the way: Firefox perfectly respects the system colours in the theme "System theme - auto" even in the latest version 116.0.2.

Firefox UI is mostly a toolbar and a settings page.
Thunderbird has a much more complex and extensive UI with many interaction points.

Please, don't simplify the intricacies of this issue just because for you it sounds simple.
I would like to kindly invite you to try and produce a patch or a theme to support all the Linux DEs and various themeings and keep guaranteeing AAA readability in all scenarios.