Is it any way to make the selected files in Dolphin stand out more?

[user69]

If you look on the picture it is difficult to differentiate the selection from the brightest of the two alternating colors in the file browser.
It seems to me like it just applies some sort of filter over the selection, so where can I change this?
I have tried to look in SystemSettings/Color but I couldnt find it. Is it maybe in one of the settings in the GTK folders on the picture, if so- which of them?
Also, I would like to keep the other colors as is, its just the selected files I want to pop out a little more. Im on a newly updated system with Arch and Im using the Wayland session.

[ben2talk]

@user69

Im on a newly updated system with Arch and Im using the Wayland session.

Have a look at other colour schemes… you themed it, as can be seen also by the lack of symbolic icons in the smallest icon size (in ‘places’) and your custom colourscheme which is low contrast shades of blue - and you’re now asking why you can’t see something…

Try changing colourschemes… especially the ‘accent’ at the top.

[user69]

dude, its exactly how I want it, everything except the selections. I know I can change colors on most other stuff. This is a slightly modified Nordic-Darker theme and I want to keep it exactly like this minus the selection.

[user69]

ahh, you just made me realize, this might be a theming question, not a question for Dolphin/KDE. I did not even consider it before just now, I will ask for help in some theming forums if I do not figure it out. thanks.

[ben2talk]

Nothing to figure out - this is Nordic darker, choose your accent (pick from the background) then slide it up brighter in the colour chooser; bingo.

[Justin]

Yes, this is an issue with the selected theme. They provide the colours for things like this.

[user69]

Yes, I might have been a little unclear, the problem is occuring when I’m using my preferred accent color, I do not want to change that, because then color changes in other places as well. I want to keep everything as it is- minus the selection. I think the selection is a filter that lightens up the accent color, I want to boost that filter. ( if that is how it works anyway, I really don’t know) I will look into it when I have time, and ask the theming community if I get stuck. will update this post if I find my solution.

[Cincinnatus]

If you only want to change the selection color, click the little pencil looking icon on the color scheme you’re using to edit the color scheme. Click on the drop-down menu and you’ll see “selection” there. That will allow you to change the color of what you’re selecting without changing everything else.

[pallaswept]

@user69

I think the selection is a filter that lightens up the accent color, I want to boost that filter. ( if that is how it works anyway, I really don’t know) I

I have been having this trouble, also. It works fine otherwise and previously in dolphin. It’s gone from ‘subtle colour scheme’ to ‘I can’t tell what I clicked or not’.

I saw the code yesterday. The way it works is to set transparency of the colour of the highlight effect.
TL;DR it is 32% of the accent colour for selected, 40% for selected and hovered, and the text colour at 6% for hovered. The code mentions the source of the values but I didn’t dig into this.

    // Background item, alpha values are from
    // https://invent.kde.org/plasma/libplasma/-/blob/master/src/desktoptheme/breeze/widgets/viewitem.svg

I feel like the 32% opacity is a bit too little, certainly in my case and in yours. I suspect that the reason why this varies (I mean, I assume it’s OK for some) is that the problem really depends on the difference between your background colour, alternate background colour and accent colour. Looking at the change, it’s unclear if the alternate background colour was tested (there are screenshots of almost everything else), or perhaps this effect was not so obvious with the stock theme. idk.

I did consider maybe I should just alter the colour scheme, but I was not seeing this problem in dolphin previously nor am I seeing it elsewhere. As it happens, like you I also have a low-contrast colour palette, and I think that everyone who does, will have this problem. There’s only so much range to play with, and what’s left after 32% doesn’t seem to be enough for two background colours.

I was going to suggest to file a bug, OP, but what solution would you suggest? I feel like the 40% (selected+hovered) is almost enough. I’ve no idea how this is impacting other themes other than my assumption that it works with the stock theme, and I don’t know what was done previously.

Note that more than once, this has been brought up before and this link is where it has been asked to discuss it. Still I’m sure the intention is to hash out the details on the forum before flooding the dev tracker, so…what do you think now, OP?

[pallaswept]

I did consider that. This is Breeze Dark:

I think the inverse selection might be even worse:

Even if we consider that OK, it doesn’t leave much room for creativity OP’s theme looks like Nord which is quite popular (I just searched it in GNS it’s massive, wow) so if OP is having problems they won’t be alone.

Applying a few popular themes are similar, but let’s choose one with some substance, OpenSUSE Dark, as packaged with their distros:

Alternate background colour’s effect on the new selection effect, seems to have actually thrown a spanner in the works here, rather than the reasonable suspicion that it’s the theme.

From the CR I read that it’s going out to all the KDE apps, so it would be cool to get it sorted while it’s still small scale and the dev (Akseli Lahtinen) invited this kind of feedback there.

[pallaswept]

Oh, it just occurred to me, I could get the old behaviour from Kate for comparison:

Hopefully that helps illustrate better. Words are hard.

[Justin]

This is Breeze Dark in Dolphin for me:

[pallaswept]

Now compare it to current Kate like above. See the problem with the new design?

Edit: “problem” might be a bad choice of words but the point is, the cause of OP’s post and mine is not the colour scheme, the colour scheme is working and has been working. Dolphin changed. If it’s meant to be a breaking change that’s fine and it’s not a “problem” of course. If it was not intended to be a breaking change then maybe it is a ‘problem’, idk, ask the dev.

But what I’m trying to draw to your attention is that it’s not a problem with OP’s colour scheme as you suggested, it’s dolphin, there has been a change which breaks lots of existing working themes, only in dolphin (for now!).

[jamesfrederik]

removed as unrelated.

[pallaswept]

This thread is about how bright the selected files in dolphin aren’t, You might want to start a new thread for your problem.

[pallaswept]

The devs are doing magic so I’m chillin in the meantime

In case it’s helpful, since I happen to be running patched Dolphin at the moment anyway, I played with these values this morning, and this is where I landed at a first glance:

         if (m_selected && m_hovered) {
-            backgroundColor.setAlphaF(0.40);
+            backgroundColor.setAlphaF(0.80);
         } else if (m_selected) {
-            backgroundColor.setAlphaF(0.32);
+            backgroundColor.setAlphaF(0.64);
         } else if (m_hovered) {
             backgroundColor = widget->palette().color(QPalette::Text);
-            backgroundColor.setAlphaF(0.06);
+            backgroundColor.setAlphaF(0.32);
         }
     }

I only had minutes to play with it so I’m not saying these numbers are exactly right, but I thought maybe they might be useful as a datapoint of “this kinda worked for that one person”.

For reference, the rest of the Dolphin UI when showing hover and using my accent colour:

Before
(Ignore my corners, this is just showing the transparency change)

After

With normie colours (Breeze and I just clicked one of the preset accent colours)

Hopefully helpful.

[user69]

Thank you Pallaswept for examining this issue and sorry for disappearing from the discussion, I gave up after some hours and landed on another theme and forgot about it/gave up. One thing I did forget to mention is that I have used the Nord Darker theme prior for a long time without this issues, and when I wanted to use it again, after a break with some other theme, I faced the described issues. It seems the devs have discussed the issue also, so I feel confident it will be fixed (if it is not fixed already, idk) If I get the time I will try to change some of the values you found to be affecting the selected colors/opacity and see if I cant get my selections to show better. Thanks again

[Phil_4000n]

I’m running Manjaro XFCE with latest updates.
using Dolphin 25.12(Qt6.10), I wish to have better highlighted selected files.
I’ve installed qt6ct and kvantum(apps theme: kvantum).
In this thread, I see a colours app by @ben2talk to change “accent”, but which is the name of this app, can’t find it pacman or at least I can identify which one.

At the same time, I also which to change mouseover colour.

Thanks

[dzon]

You’re on xfce. Highly doubt that you can use kde system settings>appearance>color

[dzon]

Dunno. Maybe it’s a 6-ish issue.

Breeze:

Lightly: