Linux Darkmode System color setting leaves bcompare unusable

[Michael Andres]

I am using color scheme Adwaita-dark on RHEL 7.7 and many areas of the bcompare UI are not usable anymore. I tried all available color schemes but none of them really resulted in a usable UI.
Is it possible to ignore the dark scheme for bcompare with an option? Currently I have black letters on black background :-(
I also tried to tweak with the setting but I could not find good settings which work and for some areas of the GUI it is not possbile to adjust the color at all.
What can I do?

Thanks
Michael

[Chris]

To override the theme for Beyond Compare 4, launch it with the terminal command:
bcompare -style=cleanlooks

Dark theme support is on the todo list for a future version of Beyond Compare.

[vmladenov]

I'm having issues too with the dark theme on Kubuntu and I want to use the default light theme of bcompare. I tried using `-style=cleanlooks` but with no success. Is there another way ?

[Chris]

Try using the command line argument without the = to launch Beyond Compare for Linux using a light theme:
bcompare -style cleanlooks

[vmladenov]

Hi Chris,
Still no effect:
Here some system info:
Operating System: Kubuntu 20.04
KDE Plasma Version: 5.18.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.68.0
Qt Version: 5.12.8
Kernel Version: 5.4.0-29-generic
OS Type: 64-bit
Theme: Breeze dark.

Even after changing the theme to light ( Breeze ) the bcompare starts with dark theme .

[vmladenov]

I don't know what happen but after switch to light and then again back to dark theme, the bcompare uses light theme. For me my issue is fixed, but I don't know what happened.

[Francis Paulin]

I am also experiencing this.

Operating System: Manjaro Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 5.19.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.74.0
Qt Version: 5.15.1
Kernel Version: 5.8.11-1-MANJARO

I have tried both command line argument variants, with and without equals, and have switched to and from a light theme. All to no avail.

Are there any other ways to force BC to have a light theme?

[Chris]

Using the command line 'bcompare -style=cleanlooks' or 'bcompare -style cleanlooks' is the only workaround I'm aware of to force a light theme when the system theme is dark. If the cleanlooks style isn't available on your system, you can also try other styles.

The following command style command lines all worked on a test system running Ubuntu 20.04:
bcompare -style cleanlooks
bcompare -style motif
bcompare -style windows

Beyond Compare uses Qt 4.8, on some Linux distributions you can customize Qt 4 themes with the application qtconfig-qt4. I don't know if it's available on Manjaro Linux, as it isn't on the list of supported Linux distributions.

[holiveros]

I experienced this on Pop OS 20.04, no matter how many tweaks I throwed at it, the colours were really off.

Turned out I had broken cleanlooks support, go figure, fixed by setting up Kwantum: https://www.linuxuprising.com/2018/0...lications.html

Hi Chris,
Still no effect:
Here some system info:
Operating System: Kubuntu 20.04
KDE Plasma Version: 5.18.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.68.0
Qt Version: 5.12.8
Kernel Version: 5.4.0-29-generic
OS Type: 64-bit
Theme: Breeze dark.

Even after changing the theme to light ( Breeze ) the bcompare starts with dark theme .

[Vyacheslav Voronenko]

Just a quick note, I observe similar weird unusable UI with dark theme on ubuntu 18.04 LTS, just like colleagues above.
None of the

bcompare -style cleanlooks
bcompare -style motif
bcompare -style windows

affect appearance of BeyondCompare

[Aaron]

Hello,

How and which dark theme did you activate on 18.04? I had to install gnome-tweak-tool and set to Adwaita-dark, and BC4 preserved its own light theming.

[Vyacheslav Voronenko]

Aaron perhaps you can advise what specific information you need (may be package versions).
I did not specifically updated theme for sure. The same adwanta-dark. and experience is weird in any of available themes.

I would really prefer possibility for BC to override OS theming and display original pallette.

[Vyacheslav Voronenko]

The same gnome-tweak-tool tool

[Aaron]

On a fresh Ubuntu 18.04 system, I installed gnome-tweak-tool, launched Tweaks, and set Applications to Adwaita-dark. BC4 launches with a dark title bar, but everything else is still light themed. This can vary greatly, depending on how you've enabled or customized dark mode. I also tested with Ubuntu 20.10 and it's built-in Theme: Standard and Dark.

Are you running the latest BC 4.3.7?
Update: Also, to confirm, are you running official Ubuntu itself, or a variant like Kubuntu?

[voronenko2]

Yep, Version 4.3.7 (build 25118)
Official Ubuntu 18.04 LTS - Linux 4.15.0-126-generic #129-Ubuntu x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Also I do confirm, that I have seen BeyondCompare to be looking normally on the same computer (in other case I would not purchase one ))) )

However as on any other developer machine, it is not for sure the naked ubuntu you are trying BC on, but a work horse with multiple software development tools.

Also BC at the moment is the only QT application with anomalies.
i.e. doxygen (I believe, UI is QT based) , Wireshark are ok.