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Is there a way to make the actual e-mails on Thunderbird dark with the rest of the dark theme?

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by sfhowes

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Hi. I wanted to use a dark theme like [TT DeepDark](https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/tt-deepdark/), but apparently those can't be used on TB78. I am moving to TB but when I read my e-mails, I want them to be in dark mode. That's what I do on Mailbird and on Gmail.

If the e-mails are not in dark mode, then the effect of the rest of the dark mode is nullified (since reading e-mails is what I do with the app).

Do you know of a way to get the e-mails to be dark too?

I attach a screenshot just so you can see how ridiculous e-mails look with the current "dark" theme settings. The name of the sender is barely readable (black on dark gray) and the "remote content", subject and e-mail itself are all in light mode.

Hi. I wanted to use a dark theme like [TT DeepDark](https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/addon/tt-deepdark/), but apparently those can't be used on TB78. I am moving to TB but when I read my e-mails, I want them to be in dark mode. That's what I do on Mailbird and on Gmail. If the e-mails are not in dark mode, then the effect of the rest of the dark mode is nullified (since reading e-mails is what I do with the app). Do you know of a way to get the e-mails to be dark too? I attach a screenshot just so you can see how ridiculous e-mails look with the current "dark" theme settings. The name of the sender is barely readable (black on dark gray) and the "remote content", subject and e-mail itself are all in light mode.
Attached screenshots

All Replies (3)

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There is a paid version of DeepDark for TB 78, but you can have white text on black background for plain text mail by changing the Colors in Options/General/Language & Appearance.

Colors of the remote content notification can be adjusted with css:

https://support.mozilla.org/si/questions/1273397

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Hi. I tried what you suggest on the colors option. It only works on some e-mails. My guess is that some senders apply a custom CSS background that overrides Thunderbird background color preferences. I don't know if DeepDark solves this and, as the theme price is not a small amount for me right now, I'm not willing to take the risk of paying just to find out that it doesn't solve the problem.

Problems I've encountered so far with this solution: 1. A sender modifies the background-color but not the text color, as the text is black by default, but they want a different tone of white. Result: white text on white background (gotta select it to read it) 2. A sender adds a "color: black" to their font css. Result: black text on dark background. 3. Thunderbird has messages such as the current "Quick Reply is temporarily disabled due to needing rewriting for Thunderbird 68+." at the bottom (this one is in black) which are either extremely ugly or unreadable on a custom background color.

There are Firefox addons such as Dark Reader which smartly render different colors so that the text is always readable. Do you know if DeepDark does this, or do all current TB theming capabilities suffer from these problems?

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Note that I stated that the colors would apply to plain text mail; html mail colors are embedded by the sender, but you can select View/Message Body As to something other than Original HTML and see if it's better.

I don't know if DeepDark does smart rendering, or if dark theme display issues are due to unresolved bugs in TB.