Bug 455809

Summary: Option "Make window titlebars accent-colored" is slightly inaccurate when applied to header-color-using color schemes
Product: [Applications] systemsettings Reporter: matthias.schrumpf
Component: kcm_colorsAssignee: Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs>
Status: CONFIRMED ---    
Severity: minor CC: descartavel1, forestix, jpwhiting, mwoehlke.floss, nate, sonichedgehog_hyperblast00, uhhadd
Priority: NOR Keywords: usability
Version First Reported In: 5.25.0   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Other   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description matthias.schrumpf 2022-06-22 20:09:56 UTC 
SUMMARY
I am requesting a feature to be added to the color theme editor. Right now, there are the options to "Apply accent color to active window titlebars" and to "Apply accent color to inactive window titlebars". In addition to these two, I would like to have the ability to toggle on or off whether or not the accent color gets applied to active or inactive window headers. 

The issue is that the present option gets applied inconsistently, depending on whether or not the theme you're editing has header colors defined. It either applies to both the title bar and header, or to the header only. 
See also the previous discussion of this issue: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=455568
Comment 1 Nate Graham 2022-06-23 13:36:16 UTC 
The issue is that the setting we have has inaccurate text when it's going to apply to a color scheme that uses Header colors. We should change it in that case.
Comment 2 Nate Graham 2022-07-19 14:51:59 UTC 
*** Bug 456887 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 3 Mircea Kitsune 2022-07-19 16:57:17 UTC 
Playing with color schemes in 5.25.3 to figure this out, I noticed there are two problems which are unclear to the end user:

1. What exactly is the header color? In the color scheme editor there is a Header category like all others (eg: Tooltip) with multiple colors. Which one does what in terms of colorization and acts as the trigger?

2. What does it mean for the header color to be defined or undefined by the color scheme? Every color has an implicit value, you can't erase a definition from the menu. Does not defined mean setting the color to black? This doesn't seem to be the case as color schemes with opposite behaviors all have a color other than fully black or white so something else must be determining it.
Comment 4 Gabriel Barros 2025-04-13 18:33:58 UTC 
> What exactly is the header color

from previous discussions, half think it is a way to add a high contrast color to the title and window border so they know which windows have focus, or to be able to discern window borders when you have dark mode and terminals open, for example.

But the other half have a vision that the "titlebar" region will very low contrast to the main window background just to transition from the title bar lightly contrasted accent to the rest of the window, for aesthetics mostly.
Comment 5 Gabriel Barros 2025-06-25 12:54:25 UTC 
Update on this ticket after 6.4.1.

First I see that dolphin and other projects did the right thing and made their header/toolbars completely opt out of the colorful header insanity. That is great (don't know how much work was imposed on each project because of this).

Second, I see there's still the same two checkboxes on the color options: "make window titlebars accent-colored" and "tint all colors with accent color"... I am correct to assume this bug is fixed and title bars now means titlebars (+borders) and the header nonsense was moved under the "tint all colors" option? Can we close this as fixed?
Comment 6 Nate Graham 2025-06-25 22:07:38 UTC 
Nothing has changed here; if you're seeing anything different, it's the result of configuration changes made by you or your distro. Please remember to be polite on Bugzilla, thanks!