Usability downgrade due to bad contrast in the new Dark theme

[AchillesBoi]

The new Mint-Y theme scheduled to be the default for the upcoming Mint 22.2 has some glaring issues with contrast in certain UI elements, particularily with check boxes and background colors.

I'll be using Nemo as an example for this, but this applies to all apps that use Mint-Y.

With the old theme, the sidebar and tab background colors are darker than the main folder content background, creating a nice separation and making it easy to see which tab is active at a glance:

With the new theme, the background colors in the sidebar, active/inactive tabs, and folder content varies so slightly that they almost appear to be the same color. This makes it harder for users to know which tab is currently active. The only real indicator is the shape of the tab (which is hard to see) and the ever-so-slightly brighter text on the active tab:

The worst problem is how checkboxes are presented. Here's how they used to look like with the old theme, with clear distinction between all UI elements, great contrast, and easy to see colors:

Now with the new theme, the colors make it harder for users to separate all these UI elements properly and the contrast here is so bad in fact, that checkboxes are barely even visible if they're not active:

While Mint 22.2 is still in beta, I'd like to bring this to the attention of the dev team in the hopes that the theme is improved before the final version is released.

Thank you.

[powersupersport]

I just upgraded to Mint 22.2 and I don't like this theme change. I liked the warm feeling of the previous one.

Also the checkbox being barely visible was the most jarring change for me, I don't know how they haven't noticed.

I've returned the themes to version 2.2.3 for now.
(a5e9818)

[krisu5]

Well, things weren't fixed in stable.

Biggest issue that should at least focused on is unselected checkbox and option box contrast, those at least should be fixed ASAP because it's really that bad currently. That's not taste issue, that's usability issue even for regular folks.

I don't mind the current theme look otherwise, my "thumbs up" vote only relates to contrast issue.

[mtwebster]

The dark mode checkbox issues should be fixed in 2.3.2 - please provide a screenshot if this is happening in the final release.

6c4a01b

[krisu5]

It does happen on that version specifically:

---

Example:

This is on XFCE flavor.

[Pol853]

I'd like to add that the new lack of contrast also particularly affects certain apps and settings pages where different options are separated into 'boxes' or fields. See for example the screenshots below comparing Mint-L and Mint-Y on the Themes app (on Mint-L the contrast looks much more like Mint-Y's used to):

As you can see, on Mint-L the boxes where the different theme options and settings are placed are lighter than the background (as use to be the case in Mint-Y), making them much easier to see. In general the UI elements look much more distinct with Mint-L's better contrast, as they used to in Mint-Y before the update. The outlines around the boxes in Mint-Y don't help much in my opinion.

[AchillesBoi]

The dev team said they wanted to follow Adwaita's color theme more closely but the choice of color placement is genuinely puzzling.

Anyways, I made a mockup of what I think we should've gotten instead:

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

This took me about 5 minutes to come up with.

I really hope a quick update is being considered because I don't think waiting another 6 months for the next release makes any sense. There are many issues with the theme that could be fixed right now, not just the checkboxes but the colors and contrast too.

[JPFlare]

Please revert this, or if you're absolutely determined to change something for the sake of changing something, at least make it more usable. IMO if you want to change a theme so drastically, make it a new theme. I loved the old one, it was dark but also warm and welcoming with the sort of orange-ish tint. The new revision is both bland and visually frustrating.

[JPFlare]

In addition to the above, I've just noticed that there's a one pixel tall line that goes across the top of every window, which wasn't particularly noticeable on the slightly brighter and warmer colors, but is plainly visible on the new darker theme.

[AchillesBoi]

It's been four days since this bug was confirmed and a solution was immediately found (at least for the checkboxes), yet no update has been pushed through.

What's the hold up? The update is there and it's ready, why hasn't it been pushed to anyone yet?

[LinuxOnTheDesktop]

It's been four days since this bug was confirmed and a solution was immediately found (at least for the checkboxes), yet no update has been pushed through.

What's the hold up? The update is there and it's ready, why hasn't it been pushed to anyone yet?

Does commit e5197d0 fix the check-boxes? If it does, then that commit has not made into an update offered to users. I appreciate that these things can take time, but the problem with the check-boxes is, as others have said. fairly severe. (And I fear that actually that commit does not fix the check-boxes. For, that commit seems to apply only to themes other than Mint-Y - and I use Mint-Y, and that theme has the check-box problems.)

@AchillesBoi: do you perchance have a patched theme (-- the patch created by you --) that fixes the problem?

[AchillesBoi]

@LinuxOnTheDesktop The screenshots I provided were just mockups I made on Pinta, not actual changes on the theme itself. I shared them for consideration by the dev team so they can fix the contrast issues while still using Adwaita colors.

There is already a fix for the check-boxes which you can get here. I am unsure why this hasn't made it to the update servers but you can grab the .deb to install the updated theme manually in the meantime.

[kaoneko]

It's weird how the new dark theme ditches the variations in background color that let you easily differentiate the various UI elements, while the new light theme does no such thing. I don't mind the darker aesthetic at all, but the loss in usability is troublesome.

@powersupersport I've returned the themes to version 2.2.3 for now. (a5e9818)

Thanks for the idea. Don't know how you did it, but this is what I figured out, for anyone interested:

wget http://packages.linuxmint.com/pool/main/m/mint-themes/mint-themes_2.2.3_all.deb
apt install mint-themes_2.2.3_all.deb
apt-mark hold mint-themes

Use apt-mark unhold mint-themes whenever you want to update it to the latest version again.