User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_6) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/13.1.2 Safari/605.1.15

Steps to reproduce:

1 Put MacOS into Dark Mode.
2 Leave Thunderbird set at default theme.
3 Select multiple messages in a message list.

OR

3 In some cases just reply to a message.

Actual results:

In the first instance, the background is white with white text on it. Totally unreadable.
In the second instance, some of the reply is dark on black. Again unreadable.

Screenshots attached.

Expected results:

The multiple "conversations" view should have a dark background.
The reply possibly shouldn't be dark at all, until there is a way of solving this properly so that text is always readable, regardless of dark/light theme.

This issue was supposedly fixed (and was reported as fixed) in bug 1639249.
But that only fixed it on Windows, not Mac.

Please try this whilst people are working on a more suitable fix.

 Menu app icon > Preferences > General
scroll to the bottom and click on 'Config Editor' button 

It will say be careful :)

right click in the list of preferences area and select 'New' > 'Integer'
At prompt enter the preference name: ui.systemUsesDarkTheme
click on OK
Enter the Value: 0
click on OK 

Close 'about:config' - top right x

Anje,
That does appear to fix it for me.

Thanks!
Jules.

(In reply to Anje from comment #3)

Please try this whilst people are working on a more suitable fix.

 Menu app icon > Preferences > General
scroll to the bottom and click on 'Config Editor' button 

It will say be careful :)

right click in the list of preferences area and select 'New' > 'Integer'
At prompt enter the preference name: ui.systemUsesDarkTheme
click on OK
Enter the Value: 0
click on OK 

Close 'about:config' - top right x

(In reply to Julian Field from comment #2)

This issue was supposedly fixed (and was reported as fixed) in bug 1639249.
But that only fixed it on Windows, not Mac.

The bug was not "fixed" on Windows or Linux or anywhere else. A workaround was implemented. I would really like to see a "spec" (simple) built based on things like comments 47, 53, and 62 of bug 1639249. Especially comment 62 which references one example of a mail reader that apparently does it right and bugzilla itself which seems to work pretty well in dark mode. Please generalize this bug to be for all platforms.

The workaround now doesn't work either (TB 81.0b2). It did work on earlier versions.
If I use the config editor within Preferences to set that ui.systemUsesDarkTheme to 0, it immediately resets itself to 1.
So I can no longer force it to 0.

Jules.

(In reply to Anje from comment #3)

Please try this whilst people are working on a more suitable fix.

 Menu app icon > Preferences > General
scroll to the bottom and click on 'Config Editor' button 

It will say be careful :)

right click in the list of preferences area and select 'New' > 'Integer'
At prompt enter the preference name: ui.systemUsesDarkTheme
click on OK
Enter the Value: 0
click on OK 

Close 'about:config' - top right x

On Windows, on Thunderbird 78.2.2, and even in Thunderbird's Safe Mode, quoted text - within the composition window - is too dark to read comfortably. That occurs if Windows is set to use a dark theme and Thunderbird is set to use its default of theme. It occurs also if Thunderbird's dark theme is enabled. Partial screenshot attached. Should I file a new issue?

Image of how quoted text can look on Windows.

Eckard, can you reproduce?

Should I test in a 80 beta ?

I guess 80 or newer?

OK, I'm just testing 80 beta 2 and cannot reproduce this issue on my iMac running Mojave in macOS dark mode.

(In reply to Eckard Berberich from comment #12)

OK, I'm just testing 80 beta 2 and cannot reproduce this issue on my iMac running Mojave in macOS dark mode.

Julian, do you agree?

Also testing on 80.0b2 Windows 10, 64 bit.
I can detect no difference between "default" dark mode (on Windows) and the dark theme. In both cases, the edit screen is white foreground and black background. Received mail is black foreground on white background. In both cases, any attempt to edit with colored text fails. The color shows in the indicator box, but reverts to "white" as soon as a key is pressed. In both cases, the mail edited is received with default text (no color).

Doug, do you have userContent.css customization enabled? Same issue with TB safe mode?

I cannot find a "userContent.css" file in my machine.. I had exactly the same results with TB in safe mode (add-ons disabled)
Caveat - my TB profile is VERY old and cumulative. I have huge numbers of obsolete files in the profile as well as some that were not auto-upgraded correctly.

See attached photo: Win 10 current, dark mode (system), default TB theme
Message Source:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

*A bookseller conducting a market survey asked a woman, "Which book has
helped *

• you most in your life?" The woman  replied, "My husband=E2=80=99s che=
  

ckbook! *

Yes, I'm running 84 beta 2 at the moment, and it's enormously better than it was.
Thanks!
Jules.

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #13)

(In reply to Eckard Berberich from comment #12)

OK, I'm just testing 80 beta 2 and cannot reproduce this issue on my iMac running Mojave in macOS dark mode.

Julian, do you agree?

Excellent. Thanks for the update