I wasn’t able to provide a screenshot yet. I tried with Fedora screenshot utility but I found that whenever I am using it Alt-Tab does not work. However it comes up with the icons with a very dark background and the selected icon has only a very faintly discernible difference to the background. Does anyone know how to change the background colour for the selection icon while alt-tabbing through the open apps?
Hi @kiwiheretic . Could you provide some more information please? Is this on Gnome, what version of Fedora? Have you customised the UI in anyway—extensions, themes, icon packs?
Could you also please create a new user and see if the issue persists?
I will try taking a photograph with my mobile camera if I can figure out how to do that with two hands.
Ok I think I have managed to get the photos.
The second photo shows what I mean when I say I cannot see which app I am alt-tabbing to because the change in background is so faint.
Yes, it is on Gnome, no customisations except I think I changed the screen resolution to make the font size bigger. I haven’t changed the theme, extensions or icon backs. Will try a new user when I get back home to see if it persists.
You can use text scaling factor to make fonts bigger if necessary:
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface text-scaling-factor "1.25"
Screen resolution is best to revert to the standard one for your display.
Artifacts and glitches are more likely to occur in non-default modes.
It’s really the background behind the alt-tab icons for the currently selected icon that I want to change.
Sure, I can try reverting back to default screen resolution but am surprised that this affects things like background colours.
Here it is with the screen resolution reverted captured in video this time so you can see it better. YouTube video showing Alt-Tab problem.
I don’t know if this is an unsolved problem with Gnome. If I should be using a spin perhaps you could advise me which one. At my age I do find myself relying on desktop zoom quite a bit.
Yeh, that’s quite odd. It looks fine on my machine here:
gnome-shell-43.2-1.fc37.x86_64
Can you try creating a new user to see if the issue persists? That’ll tell us if it’s a system package issue or something related to the user configuration.
It depends on the contrast of your monitor.
But I agree, Gnome can use different color instead of different brightness to indicate which app is “selected” to improve the readability.
Ok I created another user and made no settings changes and took a screenshot with my phone. It still looks the same. Should I be looking at another spin desktop or is there a way of tweaking the alt tab background.
I think this is not really a Fedora specific issue, but something GNOME related, i.e. Adwaita/libadwaita or GNOME Shell.
I recommend creating a topic here:
GNOME Discourse - GNOME discussions
Or try to contact the developers directly:
Issues · GNOME / libadwaita · GitLab
It’s all the more worth filing a ticket since the high contrast accessibility setting does not help solving the problem.
Maybe it is not gnome specific and I have done some googling of my own and on StackExchange it looks like an unsolved issue even offering bounty for a solution. I am not 100% sold on Gnome as I am coming from Zorin where most things just worked. I am open to other themes and spins if that at least gets me up and running.
I may have found a partial solution to the problem although it wasn’t really in the spirit of finding a simple answer to a simple problem.
I had to install Gnome Extensions. Then I was able to install “CoverFlow Alt Tab”. Its kind of over kill for what I wanted but it now does show me the currently selected task in a very clear way.
That was after trying other spins on a live USB boot situation which often added as many issues as it solved so I think best to stick to one flavour for as long as feasible.
I don’t know if it would help, but I found that the program /usr/bin/gddccontrol
can be helpful to optimize the contrast and brightness of your monitor. The program is found in the package ddccontrol-gtk
.
Switching to dark theme or or the other way around might also make a difference.
I found it in the vanilla Fedora install there are very few theme options. I think I counted only two. One light, one dark.
Fiddling with the contrast might have worked but of course that affects everything. I think the option that I have chosen seems less disruptive.