Bug 509709

Summary: Spectacle doesn't remember colours added to custom colours for the highlighter
Product: [Applications] Spectacle Reporter: Aniruddha Shankar <k>
Component: GeneralAssignee: Noah Davis <noahadvs>
Status: CONFIRMED ---    
Severity: minor CC: kde, nate
Priority: NOR    
Version First Reported In: 6.4.5   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Gentoo Packages   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:
Bug Depends on:    
Bug Blocks: 509881    

Description Aniruddha Shankar 2025-09-20 12:03:37 UTC 
SUMMARY
I prefer to highlight text using the same shade of yellow and am happy that spectacle allows me to choose the colour. The functionality to have that colour added to custom colours appears to be present but despite apparently adding the colour, the next time spectacle is opened, the colour is missing from the squares of custom colours.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Attempt to take a screenshot of a portion of the screen using the meta+shift+s shortcut
2. Click on Highlighter
3. Click on the yellow colour square
4. Select HTML #ffe600 as a chosen custom colour
5. Click add to custom colours
6. successfully highlight chosen portions of the screen
7. Attempt to take a second screenshot of a portion of the screen using meta+shift+s
8. Click on highlighter
9. Squares containing custom colours are back to white.

OBSERVED RESULT
Squares containing custom colours are back to white.


EXPECTED RESULT
Squares containing custom colours contain custom colour

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS

Operating System: Gentoo Linux 2.17
KDE Plasma Version: 6.4.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.16.0
Qt Version: 6.9.2
Kernel Version: 6.12.41-gentoo-09 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 16 × AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D 8-Core Processor
Memory: 32 GiB of RAM (31.3 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti
Comment 1 Nate Graham 2025-09-23 17:37:54 UTC 
I think this may be the result of a behavior change (or regression?) in the upstream Qt color picker widget. In the past it automatically saved custom colors; now it doesn't, and it appears to be up to the client to save them.

If this change was intentional, I imagine it was done so each app can save its own set of custom colors, rather than the dialog itself saving the custom colors systemwide, because that made it impossible to have app-specific custom color lists. But it does have the side effect of requiring work for each app that does want to save custom colors.
Comment 2 Aniruddha Shankar 2025-10-12 12:21:46 UTC 
so how would I save custom colours for Spectacle? Can't find an option in the Spectacle config.
Comment 3 Nate Graham 2025-10-13 15:39:41 UTC 
You can't. The feature hasn't been implemented in Spectacle yet, which is what needs to happen now ever since Qt removed the feature from the color dialog itself. That's what this Bugzilla ticket tracks.