Windows 11 Screen Colours have changed (slightly) 3

[pjw001]

I am running Windows 11 23H2 Build 22631.3880.

Recently the colour of the Task Bar and the Start Menu has chenged from white to pale grey. This may seem an insignifican change but it does make it more difficult for my ancient eyes to read. Is it possible to change this back to white?

It seems to have happenned after Thunderbird updated itself automatically and this update included changing its screens from black on white (which I can read easily) to white on black (which I find very difficult).

In trying to reset the Thunderbird colours I may have changed a Windows setting, but I am unable to find how to reset the Windows colours. (Thunderbird now has the colours set as I need them.)

While on the subject of colours, many (most) web sites I view (including this one) show the text in what I can best describe as dark grey rather than black. This is also difficult for me to read. Is it possible to change this?

Many thanks for any help on this.

 

[Mike Lewis]

The change from black-on-white to white-on-black sounds like a change from light theme to dark theme. This is something that seems to be happening everywhere - not just in Windows.

You can modify the themes, and choose specific colours for various elements of the Windows interface, from the Personalization page of Windows Settings (which you can reach by pressing the Windows key along with the letter I). You will see options for "Background", "Colors" and "Themes" amongst others. I suggest you experiment with these to find something that you like.

As for those websites that show text in grey rather than black ... well, this seems to be an issue that has afflicted many website designers recently. They seem to think there is something attractive about light text on a light background, when in fact it just makes the text harder to read. I don't know any generic solution, other than to use high contrast mode, which you can enable from Settings -> Ease of access. But this is really going over the top, and I suspect you won't like the result.

If you happen to be using the Vivaldi browser, you can use the "Filter" tool (at the bottom-right of the screen) to convert grey text to black in most cases (I don't remember the exact name of the setting, as I don't have Vivaldi installed on my current machine). Also, I don't remember if this is a global setting or whether you have to specify it for every page you visit.

I don't know if there is a similar setting for Firefox. (If anyone knows, I'd be glad to hear about it.)

Good luck with this. You are not alone in finding these changes annoying.

Mike

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Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

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[pjw001]

Thank you for that comprehensive reply.

It will be a few days before I can check it out (school holidays and entertaining grandchildren will keep me fairly busy) but I will get back to you.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Juat to add ....

To any website designers who happen to see this thread, PLEASE think twice before using grey for your site's main text. It might be the fashionable thing to do, but not everyone has super-sharp vision.

Mike

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Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

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[Mike Lewis]

I just stumbled across some settings in Firefox that might be of interest. Go to Settings > General, then scroll down to Language and Appearance. Click Manage Colours. You can now specify your own default colours for text and background (and also links). In the drop-down headed "Override the colours specified by the page with your selections above", choose "Always".

Here's some more info:

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/change-fonts-and-colors-websites-use#w_change-font-color

It's not an ideal solution, but it might be of some help. What would be really nice is to be able to override the specified colours on the fly, whenever you visit a difficult-to-read site. But you can't have everything.

Mike

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Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

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[pjw001]

I have investigated some of the suggestions.

The themes looked quite promising. The first problem I had was that, having created a new theme, I could see no way of amending it. I now have three custome themes, none of which do quite what I want or expected.

I also tried Firefox and this did look marginally better than Chrome.

After a fair bit of time bumbling around various setting I didn't feel I was achieving a great deal so tried Mucrosoft Edge.

Microsoft Edge looks like the best bet so I will be using that for now.

Thank you for your suggestions.

 

[Mike Lewis]

That's an interesting comment re Microsoft Edge.

I've also had trouble choosing the best browser. I tried Edge but was turned off by what looked like constant advertising by Microsoft for their various products and services. Maybe I'll give it another try. I've now gone back to Firefox after flirting with Vivaldia, Opera nd others. Firefox is far from perfect, but it is the least worst of all the products I have tried so far.

Mike

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Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

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[gbaughma]

So, it turns out there's a little "bug" in Windows 11 that greys out the ability to change your taskbar color.
Go to Settings --> Personalization --> Colors.
You'll notice that "Show accent color on start and taskbar" is greyed out.
To un-grey this, change your mode to Dark Mode, then change it to Custom.
Now you can pick a color for your taskbar that you want.
Unfortunately, some playing around showed that if you change both the Default Windows Mode and the Default App Mode back to "Light", then the "Custom" mode switches back to "Light", and the taskbar color goes grey again.
So, bottom line is, you can only customize the taskbar color in dark mode.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Ironically, we are now seeing a particularly bad example of hard-to-read text - right here in the forum. With the forum's new look, much of the text is now grey rather than black. This applies especially to the forum post editing window, but also to many other places. I now find it very hard to read.

Mike

 

[Rick998]

Ironically, we are now seeing a particularly bad example of hard-to-read text - right here in the forum. With the forum's new look, much of the text is now grey rather than black. This applies especially to the forum post editing window, but also to many other places. I now find it very hard to read.

Mike

I agree. And whilst the Preview shows bold formatted text very clearly, as soon as I click Save I can no longer make out any bold formatting.

 

[pjw001]

While we are on the subject of this web site, what happened to the list of my favourite forums? I cannot find it.

Is there a Tek-Tips forum within Tek-Tips where I can post problems with using the new site?

 

[pjw001]

Am I right in thinking that OP (Original Poster) has been replaced with Thread Starter? (White text on dart background obviously.)

 

[gbaughma]

While we are on the subject of this web site, what happened to the list of my favourite forums? I cannot find it.

Is there a Tek-Tips forum within Tek-Tips where I can post problems with using the new site?

In the "sub menu bar" go to Forums --> Watched Forums

 

[Mike Lewis]

Yes, "Watched forums" is the equivalent of the old thread minder. The main difference is that the thread minder was always visible, no matter which forum you were working in. Now, it is in a separate window, which means an extra bit of navigation to see it.

Mike

 

[pjw001]

In reply to Mike's various suggestions and comments screen colours, thank you. they have been useful and also have reassured me that it is just not me going mad. And on the colours on this site, I agree.

In reply to Greg's comments from [URL='

https://www.tek-tips.com/threads/wi...s-have-changed-slightly.1830638/post-7575395'

]Thursday at 8:04 AM[/URL], there seem to rather a lot of minor bugs creeping in to the Microsoft updates. If some problem occurs I check to see of an update has been installed recently. Still, look on the bright side, I can add "Experienced Beta Tester" to my CV.