Problem with interface colors

[scop]

Hi Calibre community,

I have a thorny problem that I wonder if someone can help me with. I am using calibre 7.12 on macOS Ventura 13.6.7.

I have my Mac set to "Auto" under the Appearance settings, which automatically switches between light and dark mode depending on the time of the day. Calibre follows this setting too.

In the Calibre settings "Look & Feel" --> "User Interface Style" I have selected "System default".

When the system is in dark mode, some of the hyperlinks are hard to see. In the book details panel on the right, the metadata hyperlinks are fine, but the hyperlinks added in the comments area and the link to upgrade a plugin in the bottom status bar GUI are a different shade of blue which is very hard to see in dark mode. Please see the attached screenshot to see what I mean. (It looks worse on the screen than in the screenshot)

I have looked everywhere for a way to change the default, but I have not found a way to do this.

I also noticed the following: If I change the system to light mode and add a hyperlink into the comments field, and then check the HTML source, I get the following:

<p>NB: A markdown version of this book is in 
<a href="obsidian://open?vault=IT%20Knowledge%20Base&amp;file=Docs%2Ftao-of-tmux%2FREADME">
<span style="color: #094fd1">Obsidian</span></a>.</p>

You can see that the system is automatically adding in a span tag with the color set to #094fd1. This is the problematic color that makes it hard to see in dark mode.

However, if I add the same text when in DARK mode, the following code is automatically added:

<p>NB: A markdown version of this book is in 
<a href="obsidian://open?vault=IT%20Knowledge%20Base&amp;file=Docs%2Ftao-of-tmux%2FREADME">
<span style="color: #3586ff">Obsidian</span></a>.</p>

This time, the color is #3586ff which looks fine in both light and dark modes.

What I would really like is to be able to set the color in these comment hyperlinks so they are easy to see on both light and dark modes.

I don't know if this color is controllable anywhere in the Calibre settings?

And what about the color in the bottom status bar, where it is telling me there is a plugin update? Can I fix the color there as well?

Thanks in advance for any assistance!

[Comfy.n]

Have you tried setting UI style to "calibre style" instead of "System default"?

Then click Adjust colors -> dark mode colors tab -> link color should be the second to last you want to change:

[scop]

Thank you so much for your reply @Comfy.n!

So you got it in one shot. In fact, as soon as I had changed the UI style to "calibre", I didn't need to customise the link colors: the default colors set in the "calibre UI" settings are OK in both light and dark modes.

TIL that it is better to use the calibre UI settings which give one much more control that the "system" UI settings.

I think that was the only thing I had not tried yet. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

The only minor problem now is that I have quite a few hyperlinks in book comments which still have the old <span> code with the problematic colors, which are still overriding the new defaults. But I can probably just edit them gradually over time.

Thanks again for the help!

PS It is interesting once you enter a hyperlink in the comments, the color that is applied (depending on whether you are in light or dark mode at the time) is kept permanently regardless of which mode you later switch to. It would be a nice enhancement for them to switch color depending on the mode you are currently in (using the colors preset in the settings for the calibre UI style).

[Comfy.n]

you're welcome ...actually we have to thank Kovid and all developers that contribute to this unbelievably customisable program.

regarding comments undesired styling, the Comment Cleaner plugin might be helpful:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=333861