Bug 152183 - macOS: Dark Mode: change in System Settings > Appearance Light | Dark should automatically switch icon theme
Summary: macOS: Dark Mode: change in System Settings > Appearance Light | Dark should ...
Status: VERIFIED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: UI (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
7.5.0.0 alpha0+
Hardware: All macOS (All)
: medium normal
Assignee: Caolán McNamara
URL:
Whiteboard: target:7.5.0
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: macOS-Dark-Mode
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2022-11-23 10:37 UTC by steve
Modified: 2023-11-09 09:30 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Application Colors > no automatic option (38.25 KB, image/png)
2022-11-28 14:37 UTC, steve
Details
What Apple does in their own word processor (488.50 KB, image/png)
2022-12-05 13:55 UTC, Caolán McNamara
Details
What Apple does in their own word processor dark mode (101.53 KB, image/png)
2022-12-06 13:02 UTC, steve
Details

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Description steve 2022-11-23 10:37:15 UTC
Description:
On macOS it is expected for changes in Appearance to be instantly adapted by all apps.

Due to the nature of how icon themes are de-coupled from light | dark mode in LO, the current behavior is unexpected.

Steps to Reproduce:
Change System Settings > Appearance Light | Dark mode

Actual Results:
Icon theme is not changed leading to unwanted results and icons with poor visibility.

Expected Results:
On switching Appearance, icon theme should follow that change to ensure visibility of icons. This can be done by setting a default macOS icon theme (dark + light) and switch that whenever Appearance is changed.

Optionally add logic to not switch back to default icon theme, when both light + dark variant exist for the user selected icon theme (and switch light | dark according to Appearance change for the user selected icon theme to avoid frustration for users having to switch back to their preferred icon theme on every change on appearance.


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No

Additional Info:
Version: 7.5.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 1435c5b12646269e2b5b58ec7d51626dce6505db
CPU threads: 8; OS: Mac OS X 13.0.1; UI render: default; VCL: osx
Locale: de-DE (en_DE.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded
Comment 1 Julien Nabet 2022-11-25 07:56:24 UTC
Caolán: thought you might be interested in this one since it concerns dark mode in macOS
Comment 2 Commit Notification 2022-11-25 14:45:51 UTC
Caolán McNamara committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/e10e5981ca020af11d25d5756964c95d51dd1535

tdf#152183 update settings when dark/light system mode toggled

It will be available in 7.5.0.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds

Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 3 dhina 2022-11-25 15:36:00 UTC
Many thanks Caolán. It looks great.

I spotted 2 minor bugs on 7.5.0.0.alpha+:
- bug #152221: changes apply partially if LibreOffice is not restarted
- bug #152220: some strange behaviours in the background of the Preference window.
Comment 4 Caolán McNamara 2022-11-25 15:56:06 UTC
bug #152221 is likely a duplicate of this one, no idea what's going on with the other issue, certainly doesn't happen here
Comment 5 steve 2022-11-27 14:05:37 UTC
What's the expected behavior after this patch?

Version: 7.5.0.0.alpha1+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 5b18eebc2c95321ce7e6edf10f4df81557382a48
CPU threads: 8; OS: Mac OS X 13.0.1; UI render: default; VCL: osx
Locale: de-DE (en_DE.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded

Tried to verify:

- macOS System Settings > General > Dark Mode + LO > Preferences > View > Colibre (dark)
- close LO
- switch to macOS System Settings > General > Dark Mode + LO
- re-open LO


Currently

LO > Preferences > View > Colibre (dark)

Expected

LO > Preferences > View > Colibre
Comment 6 Caolán McNamara 2022-11-27 14:36:28 UTC
There is one "automatic" option in the list (which is the default if the user doesn't select anything). When automatic is picked then in light mode a light icon set (sukapura I think) is used for "automatic" and in dark mode a dark one should be used (maybe breeze dark?) which is in line with other platforms. If the user explicitly picks a particular icon set then dark/light doesn't override that selection.
Comment 7 dhina 2022-11-28 11:33:04 UTC
FYI, this fix has solved bug #151389, but not bug #152262.
Comment 8 Caolán McNamara 2022-11-28 12:59:14 UTC
(In reply to dhina from comment #7)
> FYI, this fix has solved bug #151389, but not bug #152262.

recent fix for bug 152253 seems to also fix that
Comment 9 steve 2022-11-28 14:37:35 UTC
Created attachment 183862 [details]
Application Colors > no automatic option

In LO > Settings > Application Colors only two options are displayed. An option `Automatic` is not listed.
Comment 10 Caolán McNamara 2022-11-28 14:47:59 UTC
"Application Colors" is basically out of scope. I mean Preferences, LibreOffice, View, and in the pane there is an Icon Theme frame and combobox labeled Theme: One of the entries there, presumably the top one, should be "Automatic (something)" and is normally the one selected by default.
Comment 11 steve 2022-11-28 15:26:58 UTC
Got you and confirming switching macOS System Settings Light + Dark switches LO icon theme from Sukapura (light) and Breeze (dark) - following the current defaults.

Discussion as to which icon theme should be default on macOS is ongoing and does not belong here.

BUT, what I don't get is: why not add an Automatic option to application colors? The glaring white page in Text Document, which all users would see when using dark mode on macOS makes for a rather poor first impression.

I filed https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=152270 as follow-up.
Comment 12 Caolán McNamara 2022-11-28 16:18:25 UTC
Well, we didn't do it for the other platforms. Personally I feel its a bit contra-WYSIWYG, if I fire up evince (a PDF viewer) in dark mode for example it always shows a white page for the print output. I don't feel very strongly about it, so I'll leave it to the UX team to decide what it the ideal outcome.
Comment 13 Sierk Bornemann 2022-12-05 13:31:27 UTC
(In reply to Caolán McNamara from comment #12)
> Well, we didn't do it for the other platforms. Personally I feel its a bit
> contra-WYSIWYG, if I fire up evince (a PDF viewer) in dark mode for example
> it always shows a white page for the print output. I don't feel very
> strongly about it, so I'll leave it to the UX team to decide what it the
> ideal outcome.

Why not following the way, the OS vendor shows how to do it on its own platform with same or similar apps to achieve consistency platform-wide?
Take TextEdit.app on macOS: how presents TextEdit.app itself on macOS in dark mode? With a white paper background or a dark/black background? TextEdit has a dark/black background, not a white paper background.
Take for instance another Texteditor, a third party Texteditor, take TextMate: dark or wihite background in ddark mode? It has a dark background. Take CotEditor, another Texteditor app: also a dark theme, a dark background, when system wide dark mode is enabled.

So, where is the problem, to follow, what the OS vendor, in this case Apple, shows how to to it on its own platform? To be consistent on the platform, on *each* of the OS platforms, with its unique requirements and pecularities should weigh higher than to be consistent across several platforms while ignoring the platform specific requirements and peculiarities, above all on the macOS platform, where this is a very special topic and the users also expect it, otherwise they do not use the software or only reluctantly and prefer to use software that adheres to this kind of consistency and specifications and where this is better observed.

(In reply to steve from comment #9)
> Created attachment 183862 [details]
> Application Colors > no automatic option
> 
> In LO > Settings > Application Colors only two options are displayed. An
> option `Automatic` is not listed.

Is side with steve. Why not provide a third UI option 'Automatic' in LO > Settings > Application Colors and preselect it to clearly indicate the user, what is selected? Why not preselect 'LibreOffice Dark (Automatic)', when dark mode per system settings is enabled and preselect 'LibreOffice' (Automatic), when not in dark mode per system settings?
Comment 14 Caolán McNamara 2022-12-05 13:55:19 UTC
Created attachment 183998 [details]
What Apple does in their own word processor
Comment 15 steve 2022-12-06 13:02:02 UTC
Created attachment 184018 [details]
What Apple does in their own word processor dark mode

My experience seems to be different: for me Pages defaults to a black document background.

Iirc Pages shows a new document selection when first opening. It seems it remembers users choice for new default document since or me it consistently opens with black document background without any longer showing the document picker on start.