2038190 - Search tooltips have low opacity when hovered

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect, P3)

Description

[Raluca Popovici, Desktop QA]

Note:
Set browser.settings-redesign.enabled to true and enable Night sky HCM on your OS.

Affected versions:
Nightly 152.0a1(2026-05-07)

Affected platforms:
Window 11
MacOS 13.2.1

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open Firefox.
2. Navigate to the Settings(about:preferences) page.
3. Click on the "Privacy and Security" section.
4. Hover the mouse over the 'Learn more' links and observe if there is any hover effect.
5. Search for 'History' and hover the mouse over the 'history' tooltip.

Expected result:
A focus should be visible when hovering the mouse over the links. The tooltips should be visible on hover.

Actual result:
When the mouse is hovering over the 'Learn more' links, the hover effect is missing on Windows(OS). The tooltips are not visible on hover.
On macOS, the hover effect is barely visible.

Regression range:
Not a regression, it's a new feature.

Comment 1

[Raluca Popovici, Desktop QA]

Attachment: tooltips.mp4

Comment 2

[Alice0775 White]

On windows11, regression window about hover effect link:
https://hg-edge.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/pushloghtml?fromchange=dccf044ce33a90816e6a0da2fec9a5d7d05b5924&tochange=b57f595130acee604d2c3f63a97940d030575498

The good build, link underline will be visible on mouse hover.
The bad build, link underline is always visible regardless with on mouse hover.

Regressed by Bug 1821788.

And, even if not HCM, the tooltip becomes almost invisible on mouse hover.

Comment 3

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

Set release status flags based on info from the regressing bug 1821788

Comment 4

[akulyk]

Thank you for filing a bug. We have a separate bug for the tooltip issue: Bug 2034250 - Searching for "clear history" with settings redesign enabled shows tooltip in a wrong place

Comment 5

[Raluca Popovici, Desktop QA]

Attachment: tooltips1.mp4

Comment 6

[Tim Giles [:tgiles]]

The tooltips having a very low opacity on hover has existed since Firefox 58, Bug 1405624.

link underline is always visible regardless with on mouse hover.

This was an intended change from the bug you referenced, Bug 1821788. I don't think we would want to go back to the previous behavior, but it could be an enhancement to remove the underline on hover. However, I don't know the current best practices for accessibly styling links. My current understanding is that links should always be underlined so they prominently stick out from regular text content. Maybe that's changed by now.

Comment 7

[Mark Striemer [:mstriemer]]

HCM link colour issue appears to be bug 1857548. No work to do here on that IMO

We could potentially move the tooltip below the target rather than hiding it in HCM (and non-HCM I guess) on hover. This is likely a more difficult change and it doesn't seem too critical that it always be visible

Comment 8

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

The severity field for this bug is set to S4. However, the accessibility severity is higher, .
:mstriemer, could you consider increasing the severity?

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