I'm having the same issue. Its very frustrating because my highlights are color coded and I extract the annotations for studying purposes. Any suggestions on how to avoid this?

I've noticed it happens sometimes when you delete an annotation. The PDF file you're viewing closes. You're returned to your library. When you re-open the file, all recent highlights get switched to a new (same) color.

For e.g., i read 20 pages, made highlights between orange, yellow, green and red. Deleted an annotation, file closed. Upon re-opening everything was red.

Hi, i've also noticed this happens when you're working on iPad. You do a few highlights. then if you open the document on mac, all those recent highlights will be turned to red. I'm not sure if the fact that its always red can shed some light on whats causing it, but it might just be red for me since I do use that amongst other colors.

What seems to be happening is that at some point while annotating a document, the colours get 'locked in' to whatever colour we're currently using. At that point, switching colours will only appear to work in the interface, and the colours as they appear in the document will match as if it was working, but all the annotations we're creating are actually the 'locked in' colour (in this case, red).

You can confirm this by checking your annotations list while you're creating them. You'll see that you highlight something in green, but it'll get added to the Annotations pane as Red. Since the Annotations are being saved to your database as Red, they'll sync to all your other devices as Red. As far as Zotero knows, you were just annotating in Red the entire time.

The only work around I can think of at the moment would be for us to go through the document four times; one for each highlight colour (for you that would be yellow, red, green, orange). The more often you switch colours, the more likely the issue will occur as there are more opportunities for the colour to get 'locked in'.

Hi @michalrentka , thank you for looking into this for us!

It's a bit hard to reproduce, especially on video, as it requires a lot of annotations before it surfaces. However, I've caught a recording of it. I've attached a full set of details below. The post will likely be quite large, but better to have too much info than not enough.

## Debug Report

Here's a debug log from my linked issue, copied here for your convenience, in case it might be useful (it's from an older occurrence):
D818986991

The debug report should show 1.0.23, but the video recreation below was in 1.0.24.

## Step by Step Instructions for Recreation (iPad only)

1. Open Zotero
2. Open Document (PDF; haven't tested with EPUB)
3. Begin annotating in any colour
4. After a few annotations, switch colours
5. Repeat 3 and 4 for quite a few annotations; the more that are made the higher the chance the issue occurs. 20+ seems to be a safe number to get it to happen.
6. Exit the document
7. Re-open the document; after a certain point (the 'bug occurrence'), all the annotations will have switched colours to whichever colour was last used before the bug occurred.

Note: The document doesn't have to be exited for the bug to occur. In fact, opening the annotations pane will show the issue before exiting the document. However, frequent checking of the annotations pane while annotating seems to 'ward' off the issue and prevent it from occurring.

I made 100+ annotations to a document, checking every 5 annotations, and the issue never occurred during that attempt. It's a tough issue as if you check too early, you'll prevent the bug, but you won't notice the bug has occurred until you check.

## Video Recreation

I was able to recreate the issue on video. I opened a PDF document and began making nonsense Area annotations, changing colour ever page or so. I briefly turned off the iPad screen (using the top right button) during the recording which interrupted the recording, so there is two videos. The only thing that occurred between each video is the 3-second period where the screen was turned off.

The second video is where the issue occurred, but I provided the full lead up to the issue just in case there may be anything there. I've had this issue occur without locking the screen, but maybe locking the screen also happens to trigger whatever is causing the issue? I also switched from dark to light mode in the first video, but that was only to make the colours more apparent, and I don't do this frequently so it isn't a factor in causing the issue.

Here's the first video with a lead up to the issue for full context:
https://youtu.be/moFpciQbRa4

Here's the second, which shows the issue occurring. Note how area highlights that were made before the screen were locked were also affected, possibly indicating that the bug had occurred much sooner but it wasn't apparent until the pane was opened:
https://youtu.be/PeIKXKjTS-o

## Screenshots

As a bonus, here's some screenshots of how the issue presents if you don't close the document and instead catch it in the annotations pane:

Highlighting example; note the annotation is saved as purple but the depicted and intended highlight is yellow:
https://imgur.com/kdWo4Xj

Another highlighting example:
https://imgur.com/UKcach9

Area example, taken from the above videos:
https://imgur.com/4bBcQTd

@Kitsune5010 thank you so much for the detailed response. Hopefully this helps the devs resolve this quickly.

I've been using the beta build for last few hours. Have not encountered the issue. I've tried closing the app and opening document on Mac. The colors are preserved. I've also tried looking at annotations tab while highlighting and the proper colors show up right away unlike in @kitsune5010 's example. Thank you for your hard work and quick resolution of the issue.