XYplorer Beta Club

System

XYplorer v28.00.703 64-bit
Windows 11 25H2
Screen Resolution: 4k @ 200% scale

Description of Problem

[Selected Tab Text] color (white FFFFFF) incorrectly uses [Breadcrumb Bar 1 Active Text] color (green 00CF00).
[Other Tabs Text] color (red C50000) incorrectly uses unknown?? color source.
[Tree Text color] (bright yellow FFFF00) incorrectly shows a faded dark yellow.

Steps to Reproduce

Highlights & Dark Mode:

• Adaptive colors : [off]
  Level of darkness: 15
  Text contrast: 15

Colors:

• Tree
  Text: FFFF00 (bright yellow)

• Tabs
  Selected Tab Text: FFFFFF (white)
  Other Tabs Text: C50000 (red)
  Apply Colors: [off]
  Match selected tab with breadcrumb bar: [off]
  Preserve custom colors: [off]

• Breadcrumb Bar 1
  Active Text: 00CF00 (green)
  Match breadcrumb bar with custom colored tab: [off]

Do you see the same problem in light mode?

In light mode, the tree text color appears correct (bright yellow).
The breadcrumb bar color still affects the Active tab text color (lime green).
The Other tabs text color becomes #000000.

Still in light mode, I turned dual pane on and noticed it displays this:

Pane 1 (selected pane)
Active Tab text color: lime green (should be white, seems sourced from Breadcrumb 1 Active text)
Other tab text color: black (should be red, unknown color source)
Breadcrumb 1 text: lime green (correct)

Pane 1 (not selected)
Active Tab text: #777777 (should still be white? seems taken from Breadcrumb 1 or 2 Inactive Text)
Other tab text: black (should still be red? unknown color source)
Breadcrumb 1 text: #777777 (correct)

Pane 2 (selected)
Active Tab text: #cfcfcf (should be white? taken from Breadcrumb 2 active text)
Other Tab text: black (should be red? unknown source)
Breadcrumb 2 text: #cfcfcf (correct)

Pane 2 (not selected)
Active Tab text: #777777 (should be white? also seems taken from Breadcrumb 1 or 2 Inactive Text)
Other Tab text: black (should be red? unknown source)
Breadcrumb 2 text: #777777 (correct)

Toggling back to dark mode seems to flip the black Other tabs texts to #d9d9d9 which I don't see defined anywhere in my tab/breadcrumbs settings, so that's also an unknown source.

The interplay between the various color settings is quite complex and is always governed by readability. If you notice one or more significant usability issues, let's address them one at a time.

For me, customization is what makes any program usable. The bright colors in my screenshots were just to make the issue easy to spot. They’re not necessarily what I’ll use every day.

I understand the color system is designed with readability in mind, and that makes sense as a default, but when a user specifies exact values, that’s a deliberate, conscious choice, so those values should be treated as absolute rather than overridden.

Customization exists so each person can set up an interface in the way that works best for them. Usability and readability are subjective, and exposing hex values implies full control. If those values aren’t applied, it undermines the whole purpose of customization.

What I'm trying to say is: User‑entered colors should be authoritative. Defaults, algorithms, safeties are helpful for new users, but once someone has chosen their own values and turned off everything that might interfere, those should be shown exactly as entered.

All I'm trying to do is replace Explorer with XYplorer in as close an replica as possible -- icon by icon, colour by colour, metric by metric. And I can't do it. I hit a brick wall here with the colours, and that's why I'm here. To report as much detail as I can.

No developer can predict how everyone will work, although you do a great job of it.

1) You seem to be trying to create a hard-coded dark mode while being in light mode. Why don't you just use the built in dark mode?

2) The tab style also plays a role here: If Configuration | Tabs and Panes | Tabs | Visual style is set to "XYplorer Style" or "XYplorer Style (rounded)" then some of the color settings are ignored.

3) I took a deep look into and yes, there are bugs! I'll see what I can do...

I'm not trying to use light mode. My original screenshots at the start of the thread are dark mode, but you asked me to switch it to light mode to report if there was any difference. The light mode screenshot was just to include that here, but I don't use light mode at all. Thank-you for your patience, and I appreciate all you do.

In your first screenshot all colors in Configuration | Colors and Styles | Colors have been manually altered to create a hard dark mode. Why?

I do that because the dark mode toggle alone isn't enough. "Level of darkness" and "Text contrast" can't give me the same hex values as Explorer's dark mode, so I use exact hex values anywhere the UI can do it. Without that, the dark mode is more of a guessing game without granularity or control.

XY isn't built for that approach. The focus here is on quickly toggling dark/light mode.

I mentioned this earlier: "I understand the color system is designed with readability in mind, and that makes sense as a default, but when a user specifies exact values, that’s a deliberate, conscious choice, so those values should be treated as absolute rather than overridden."

From the product page: "It’s Customizable. You can fine‑tune the application to look and behave exactly the way you want… Even the dark mode."

It's confusing when the program allows specifying exact colors but doesn’t always apply them. For users exclusively in dark mode, fast toggling isn't priority, consistency is. The "Adaptive Colors" checkbox already *seems* related to automatic color shades to ease rapid light/dark mode toggling. I kept that setting off, so I thought the exact hex values entered elsewhere would be more predictable where possible. And I don't feel those custom hex color settings should be exclusive to light-mode.

I know it's not reasonable to expect XYplorer to replicate Explorer perfectly, but I am going toget it as close as configuration (and scripting) allow. I'm working on getting a mirror of Explorer's Quick Access into a custom Catalog -- automatically updating itself anytime a change is detected in Explorer's QA. It's not quite there yet, but it's coming along!

I get it. We will get a bit closer to it in the next beta.

You will have to tick Configuration | Colors and Styles | Colors | Apply colors and in the next beta your unselected tabs should have the expected colors.

Thanks, I appreciate you hearing my thoughts. I'll spam ctrl-click on that Update button the next few days and report back.

Reporting feedback on the new 64-bit beta (28.00.1200)!

With "Apply Colors" is toggled on, and Dark mode on, colours are much improved. Only two bits don't behave:

"Breadcrumb Bar 1 Active Text" and "Breadcrumb Bar 2 Active Text" always override Selected Tab text, depending on which dual pane is in the foreground.

What's your Configuration | Tabs and Panes | Tabs | Visual style ?