Bug 433189

Summary: Breeze 5.20 no longer allows to have a different title bar color from the background color
Product: [Plasma] Breeze Reporter: gustavo <lobugs>
Component: window decorationAssignee: Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs-null>
Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME    
Severity: minor CC: kwin-bugs-null, nate
Priority: NOR    
Version First Reported In: 5.21.0   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Other   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description gustavo 2021-02-18 18:07:33 UTC 
SUMMARY
Since the plasma 5.20 update, my Breeze (and Oxygen, but I used Breeze) window decorations no longer show the color I set for the active window title bar.

Also, in the system settings/appearance/window decorations dialog where you can edit the appearance details of the themes, in this case Breeze, the option to have a different title bar color from the window background color is gone. So I think this might be by design. (Same for Oxygen)

There is the option in the Breeze window decoration to have a dividing line between title bar and the rest of the active window, but that is not a good enough visual cue for me.

I am visually impaired and often have to work with a large number of windows. Having a different title bar color for the active window allows me to have different title bars for active and inactive windows. That makes it much easier to spot the active window and my life a lot easier. Darkening non-active windows is not a solution, since I have to consult text in non-active windows while working in the active window, and darkening makes it hard to read.

For now, I make do with the "Plastik" window decoration, where the different title bar color still works – but for how long?

This used to work in Plasma 5.20
------------------------
Operating System: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20210215
KDE Plasma Version: 5.21.0
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.78.0
Qt Version: 5.15.2
Kernel Version: 5.10.16-1-default
OS Type: 64-bit
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 4 × Intel® Core™ i5-2500K CPU @ 3.30GHz
Memory: 7.7 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mesa DRI Intel® HD Graphics 3000
Comment 1 Nate Graham 2021-02-19 19:03:51 UTC 
Sorry this happened. In Plasma 5.21, when a color scheme has Header colors in it, its Titlebar active/inactive colors are ignored, and the Header colors are used to create a unified look for the window's entire header area.

If you don't like this, you have three options:

1. Switch to a color scheme that does not have Header colors (e.g. the old Breeze color scheme, which is still shipped)
2. Remove the Header colors from your current color scheme
3. Create the desired appearance using the Header colors of your current color scheme, by adjusting the Normal/Inactive background colors in the Header section

If you wish to use #2, I'm afraid the procedure is rather annoying since we were not able to write a GUI to remove header colors in time for 5.21. Sorry about that. TO do this manually, you will need to save a copy of the color scheme, open it at ~/.local/share/color-schemes/[the color scheme] and remove the "Header" sections, then switch to another color scheme in the Colors KCM and back to your now-header-less custom color scheme.