Font color somehow changed to white

chland117
I opened Zotero for the first time in a couple weeks and found that the font color had somehow been changed to white, making anything (menus, titles, etc.) impossible to read against the white background. Is there any way to change the font or background color? I'm running the Mac version 5.0.80.
  • dstillman
    edited December 6, 2019
    You're the first to report anything like that. Can you take a screenshot, upload it somewhere (e.g., Dropbox), and post a link here? (You can also email to support@zotero.org with a link to this thread if you prefer.)

    Have you set custom CSS for Zotero (chrome/userChrome.css in the Zotero profile directory)? Have you tried reinstalling Zotero from the download page?
  • chland117
    edited December 6, 2019
    Here's a screenshot: https://imgur.com/gallery/UXG9exr - the gray box in the center is the menu that pops up when you right-click on the article.

    I've tried reinstalling Zotero, but nothing changed. I'm unsure how to set a custom CSS for Zotero - I found the profile folder, but don't see anything saying "chrome" or with a ".css" extension.
  • dstillman
    Wild.

    Can you provide a Report ID?
  • chland117
    [JavaScript Error: "TypeError: invalid 'instanceof' operand CI.nsIDOMXULDocument" {file: "chrome://zotero/content/bindings/timedtextarea.xml" line: 88}]
  • dstillman
    We need an actual Report ID.
  • chland117
    My apologies. It is 415906741
  • dstillman
    edited December 6, 2019
    If you create a new Zotero profile, does it happen there too?

    (If so, you can open the profile manager again, delete the new test profile, and say to delete files. Make sure you don't delete your default profile.)
  • chland117
    The text in the profile manager is white as well, and when I click "create new profile", a gray box comes up with no visible text or buttons
  • dstillman
    Right, so, don't worry about the new profile, then.

    Are you running any third-party software on this computer that might be interfering?

    It shouldn't matter, but are you using Dark Mode?
  • chland117
    I can't think of any third-party software that would be interfering; I haven't installed anything new since I last used Zotero and this is the first time I've had this issue.

    I am using dark mode, but switching back to light mode doesn't change anything.
  • dstillman
    Did you restart Zotero after switching back to light mode?
  • chland117
    edited December 6, 2019
    Oops, didn't think to do that. Zotero is back to normal when I'm using light mode! Thank you!

    Edit: the right-click menu is still a solid gray box though, no text is visible at all.
  • dstillman
    Hmm. That's odd, though — no one else has reported this, and I'm not seeing it here in Catalina. It's possible that it's limited to dark mode in Mojave, though I'd still expect us to have received other reports since Zotero 5.0.78 (which could've affected this due to an upgrade to the underlying framework) was released on Dec. 1.

    You can try upgrading to Catalina and seeing if it still happens. Zotero doesn't support Dark Mode and should really just look normal when it's on.
  • chland117
    Ok, I am still running Mojave, so it sounds like that's the issue. Thank you very much for the help!
  • dstillman
    edited December 6, 2019
    To be clear, that's just one possibility. I don't know for sure if upgrading will allow you to use Dark Mode without this happening. If not, it's something else on your system.
    the right-click menu is still a solid gray box though, no text is visible at all
    We have had a couple other reports of that, both in Mojave and Catalina. At least for one person, it was fixed by creating a new macOS account (meaning that it's caused by something in the old account).
  • chland117
    edited January 9, 2020
    Sorry to reopen this thread, but I recently updated to OSX Catalina, and the problem is still occurring. I've had some luck editing a userChrome.css file to change the font color of the main screen back to black, but I'm not familiar at all with CSS and am unsure of how to change the font color of any drop-down or right-click menu (which still appear completely gray)
  • dstillman
    edited January 10, 2020
    Did you try creating a new macOS account? This doesn't happen in a normal installation even when Dark Mode is used.

    (And to be clear, I wasn't suggesting that you should use userChrome.css to fix this — just saying that if you had created a userChrome.css file, that could cause problems.)
  • joeypotter3
    I had the same issue with my user profile and Dark Mode Mac OS.

    Completing these steps resolved the problem for me:

    1. Run this command in a terminal: defaults delete -g NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance
    2. Log out and back in
    3. Go to System Preferences > General and select "Light" and then back to "Dark"
    4. Open Zotero and it should now be working as expected

    I'm running Zotero 5.0.86-beta.9+36afe4573 in macOS Catalina 10.15.4
  • gernophil
    Looks like the bug is back: https://github.com/zotero/zotero/issues/3197

    Does someone have an idea?
  • dstillman
    edited July 2, 2023
    @gernophil: See the post above yours. Nothing is "back" — nothing was ever changed in Zotero in regard to this. It's almost always due to using some macOS utility that customizes Dark Mode, and the defaults command above resets that.
  • gernophil
    Ok, that completely solved it. Still it's strange, that this does not lead to errors on any other app. Also it might be great, if there was an Option to solve this only for Zotero and not globally.
  • dstillman
    You can try the Zotero 7 beta to see if that helps.
Sign In or Register to comment.