qBittorrent's 5.0.0 Dark Theme transfer list has horrible looking blue/grey alternating colors and panel buttons that don't stay pressed

[Pentaphon]

trafficstars

A lot of people are complaining that there's just too much blue in the transfer list, especially on the dark theme, and there's an issue with buttons not having enough contrast after they are pressed.

Suggestion

1. The alternating blue/grey transfer list, trackers list, content list, etc shouldn't have blue at all and should look more like the alternating colors on the filters sidebar where it alternates between dark grey and light grey. Only the selected entries should be blue. Please make all the lists consistent with the filters sidebar, which you can see below. Looks much better with no blue.

<---horrible, ugly blue/grey alternating colors in the main lists <--- visually pleasing dark and light grey alternating colors in the filters sidebar

2. General, Tracker, Peers, etc buttons need to have improved contrast to show which button corresponds to the active pane. Here, you can hardly see that the General button is the one that should look very different, contrast-wise because it is the active pane. When you first press the button, it changes enough to look different but when you click another torrent, it loses the change and they all appear the same.

Anything else people would like to suggest? These are pretty easy tweaks that can be done in 1 update.

[maboroshin]

1. Yes. Transfer listings should be light gray and dark gray. Blue is confusing.
2. Yes. A selection color is required. A slightly lighter background color, or a yellowish mixture (Color as electricity glows).

My personal theory on color assignment: Color theme basics

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• There was a previous issue on this topic. (Search for “blue” in this issue) https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/issues/18078#issuecomment-1329086219
• Slightly related issue: https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/issues/21433

[xavier2k6]

@Pentaphon

Point (1) above switch off "Use alternating row colors" Point (2) - needs to be looked in to further, however Qt support for dark mode keeps changing & may actually differ too between Windows 10/11.

[dante3732]

How to disable dark mode in qbittorent? It looks too bad right now.

[HanabishiRecca]

How to disable dark mode in qbittorent?

https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/issues/21421#issuecomment-2382428168

[Aesthermortis]

dracula theme is better

[Pentaphon]

Point (1) above switch off "Use alternating row colors

I want alternating row colors, though. I just don't want them to be blue at all. They should be light grey and dark grey.

It does get rid of the blue as a workaround, but ruins the effect of having alternating colors by default.

[xavier2k6]

Point (1) above switch off "Use alternating row colors

I want alternating row colors, though. I just don't want it them to be blue at all. They should he light grey and dark grey.

Currently this is set by Qt with their dark mode support.......it's still in a state of flux on their end.

[rs443]

Point (1) above switch off "Use alternating row colors"

Is there such a setting? I would like to turn it off, the alternating row colors is hideous. I am using v5.0.0.0 webui.

[Pentaphon]

Is there such a setting? I would like to turn it off, the alternating row colors is hideous.

Yes. It is in tools > options > behavior >transfer list > use alternating row colors

dracula theme is better

@Aesthermortis I think the dracula theme actually makes things worse.

[rs443]

Is there such a setting? I would like to turn it off, the alternating row colors is hideous.

Yes. It is in tools > options > behavior >transfer list > use alternating row colors

Thanks! However it seems like it is the desktop client only, there is no such setting in the WebUI (yet?).

[Pentaphon]

Thanks! However it seems like it is the desktop client only, there is no such setting in the WebUI (yet?).

I believe that depends on your browser's dark mode settings. Specifically whether web pages should be dark or not.

[thalieht]

there is no such setting in the WebUI (yet?).

Looks that way: #21123 it's going in 5.1.

[nathanbrauer]

Apparently, the alternating colors is using the Windows Accent color (as defined in Windows Settings -> Personalization -> Colors).

To be frank -- this was a poor choice.

This is what I was greeted with this morning when I upgraded and suddenly got Dark Mode 🥴:

Yikes.

1. Accent colors should always be used sparingly. I didn't even realize that my accent color on Windows was set to red, because Windows (correctly) uses it so sparingly: Only appears in toggles and links -- not even buttons
2. For best readability, alternating rows should be an ever-so-slightly lighter (but still dark) grey. It should be subtle, but clear.
3. The shades of dark grey should match that of the OS. E.g. in this screenshot you see 3 standard shades of grey within Windows 11: Dialog background, Option background, and Selection background

On this note, using the accent color on the progress bars is also way too much. If we want to use the accent colors here, follow how Windows has implemented accent colors in their taskbar:

• 
• It appears they have a dark grey background with a roughly 50% translucent accent overlay.
• The translucency really helps it look tasteful. Without, it just looks obnoxious:

[xavier2k6]

When we read the dark system palette on Windows, then we use the theme's accent color for the QPalette::Highlight color role. This is however not quite correct, as the Accent is used in other places as well, and some controls use different colors (i.e. on Windows 11's "red" dark theme, the highlight is bright red, while the focus frames are in a paler orange). QPalette doesn't have an Accent color role right now, and adding that is a bit complex as the internal QPalette data structures need to change quite a bit once we go above 21 color roles - and we are at 21 already.

https://www.qt.io/blog/dark-mode-on-windows-11-with-qt-6.5#:~:text=When%20we%20read%20the%20dark%20system%20palette%20on%20Windows,%20then%20we%20use%20the%20theme's%20accent%20color%20for%20the%20QPalette::Highlight%20color%20role.

We didn't make any changes in relation to this issue yet.

@qbittorrent/bug-handlers This is also something to be handled in near future.

[xcheater2]

hello, with docker, in my nas synology, iu web, is difficult to see torrent. Look :

[Auximen]

This is terrible, I can't return the light theme to Docker on Synologiy NAS. I don't want to change Windows settings to light just so that in one application - qBittorrent web interface is light. Now I'm busy looking for alternative torrent clients. Why was it necessary to release this update, which spoils the web interface so much?

[HanabishiRecca]

hello, with docker, in my nas synology, iu web, is difficult to see torrent. Look :

Clear the browser cache.

[Agoutii]

This was a horrendous and incredibly short-sighted design decision, especially for those of us forced to update due to the previous security flaw. It should default to using the previous default UI with at most a popup request asking whether the new UI wants to be used. The UI should also let you set the background colour along with all the text colours. The mid-tone grey being forced as a darkmode background is a terrible choice to begin with (there's a reason websites, including github, use much darker backgrounds).

[Pentaphon]

It should default to using the previous default UI with at most a popup request asking whether the new UI wants to be used.

You can switch back to the old theme and switch to the Qt style you like. You're not trapped.

https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/wiki/List-of-known-qBittorrent-themes

[vnicolici]

If those additional themes listed on that Wiki page can't be included in the installer, maybe that Wiki link should be added to the settings UI in the Interface section, so that it's easier to find. I never used custom themes before, but the way the UI currently looks is pushing me towards that.

Also, initially I thought that the included themes all look the same, because nothing was happening after I changed the theme and pressed apply. And yes, initially I didn't read the small italic text above, "Changing Interface settings requires application restart".

As I'm guessing removing the restart requirement when changing themes is not a feasible option, I think a more obvious warning about that, shown when I click "apply" or "OK" when such changes are detected, would be better. Maybe even giving the option to restart the app automatically. And not just for this, but for changes requiring restarts in general.

Anyway, why I'm here is because the progress bars for each download become almost unreadable with the new dark theme when the download progress reaches around 50%. Until 50%, the text is bold white on gray. After 50%, it becomes a very thin black font over the Windows accent color, currently purple on my system. A photo showing what I mean:

[vnicolici]

Today I couldn't stand it anymore, and tried various other custom dark themes. Unfortunately none of them were great, either too bright backgrounds or the design was ugly. Then I started trying all the included themes. All the dark themes had the same issue with unreadable text on the progress bars.

The only theme that doesn't have that issue with the unreadable progress bars is the Vista theme, but that's a light theme. Aside from being a light theme, it's not bad. While I would still prefer a dark theme, until the issues with the dark themes are fixed I'll stick with the Vista theme.

[VsevolodGolovanov]

@vnicolici, try catppuccin-frappe if you haven't.

[vnicolici]

@VsevolodGolovanov Thanks, but no, I tried those catppuccin themes, I don't like the blueish backgrounds.

But your reply made me take a look again at other custom themes, and I think mumble-dark from qbt-theme is acceptable. The only problem is that it's not as dense horizontally, the columns seem to have a lot of horizontal padding. I had to resize all my columns to make them larger. Other than that, it's not bad.

I would have tried more themes, but it's quite hard to try new themes when you have a lot of torrents, because shutting down qBittorrent takes about a minute in my case.

[Asinin3]

Its silly that the names of the themes dont even explain if they are light or dark, or anything and you have to restart the client to see. Upon updating to v5, I was greeted with the awful color scheme for the list, tried changing from Fusion, to Windows 11, to System, to Windows theme.. And they all looked the same?

I was confused and almost ready to just go back to the old versions if I couldn't find a solution or decent theme file quickly.

[HanabishiRecca]

I was confused and almost ready to just go back to the old versions if I couldn't find a solution or decent theme file quickly.

Set windowsvista. It returns theme of 4.x.

[rs443]

It has been 7 months since 5.0.0. Any updates in the alternate row colors in WebUI since then?

[xavier2k6]

ANNOUNCEMENT!

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