1962961 - [macOS] Incorrect font color shown in menu bar on MacOS

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1941595

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

Description

[yu270]

Attachment: font dark left and white right - Copy.jpg

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:137.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/137.0

Steps to reproduce:

This report is for a sporadic bug in the menu bar font color on Firefox 136 and 137 for MacOS (version 15.x).
The bug is seen when a running Firefox window is brought to the foreground or opened from minimized state.
Exact steps to reproduce the bug are unknown yet, but the bug has been observed for over four weeks.

Actual results:

A dark gray font color appears (see left photo).
The bug might seem trivial but the font is much darker to the human eye than the first photo suggests, almost unreadable.

Expected results:

The expected white font color is seen in the right photo.
To make the menu bar font color change from dark gray to white, a user may:
(1) click in the Firefox window or
(2) minimize and re-open the Firefox window
Possibly the font color is refreshed when one of the two actions is performed.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::Layout: Text and Fonts' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

This doesn't seem like a Core::Layout bug; more likely belongs in Widget::Cocoa or thereabouts.

Comment 3

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

I'm assuming macOS is in "dark mode" when this is observed. Is it possible that you have the Appearance set to Auto in System Preferences (at least, I see that option on my macOS 14.x system, and assume it is also present on 15.x)?

I'm wondering if the affected window was created (and maybe minimized) while the system was in Light mode; then as time passed, the OS automatically transitioned to Dark mode; but when the window is restored, Firefox didn't immediately apply the changed color scheme. Does that sound like it might be the scenario you're seeing?

Comment 4

[yu270]

@jfkthame: I am unsure if the scenario you described is what's happening but here is more information.

The MacOS System Settings/Appearance fields are:
Appearance: Dark
Accent color: Multicolor
Highlight color: Accent Color
Sidebar icon size: Medium
Allow wallpaper tinting in windows is on

I have not changed these settings in months, possibly years.
On MacOS 15.4.1, Appearance choices are Light, Dark and Auto.

Your note led to a sequence that reproduces the bug on MacOS 15.4.1, although not 100% of the time:

1. Open System Settings
2. Click Appearance
3. Open Firefox 137.0.2 by clicking the Firefox icon in the Dock; Firefox opens on top of System Settings
4. Minimize Firefox window
5. Click the System Settings window again (bringing it to the foreground and placing its drop down menus in the menu bar)
6. Click the Firefox icon again in the Dock or the icon with the minimized Firefox running window

Result: When the Firefox window opens, the menu bar font color changes from light color to dark gray as seen in the left photo.
Also, the menu bar font color now stays gray when using Firefox to browse web sites, open Firefox settings or move the window around the screen.
Clicking in the menu bar restores the font color to normal light color shown in right photo.

With the steps above, the bug happens about half the time, not every time as I would expect.
It happens more when clicking the Firefox icon, compared to clicking the minimzed Firefox running window icon.

In Firefox settings (about:preferences), "Website appearance" is set to Automatic. Not sure if that's relevant.

Is this helpful or would a video be better?

Comment 5

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

Thanks for the additional information; that seems a clear description of what you're seeing.

So far I have not been able to reproduce the problem on my macOS 14.x system -- but it may well be version-dependent. I hope someone else with 15.x will also take a look.

(One more setting that may be relevant: at least on macOS 14, I had to enable the Reduce Transparency option in System Settings / Accessibility / Display in order for the system to use a dark menu bar; without this, even in Dark Mode, the menu bar remains light, with dark text. I don't know if that setting is required on macOS 15 to get a dark menu bar with light text, or if that's now the default in Dark Mode?)

Comment 6

[Stephen A Pohl]

This is almost guaranteed to be a duplicate of bug 1941595, which is fixed in Firefox 138. Please let us know if this isn't the case.

Comment 7

[yu270]

Confirmed, this is a duplicate of bug 1941595. My apologies that my Bugzilla searches failed to find 1941595 before reporting this week.

Comment 8

[Stephen A Pohl]

No worries and thank you for confirming!