thunderbird / thunderbird/thunderbird-android

Poor contrast/legibility in message lists, items look greyed out/deactivated

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Dominant language
Kotlin
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Description

Checklist
  • I have used the search function to see if someone else has already submitted the same bug report.
  • I will describe the problem with as much detail as possible.
App

Thunderbird for Android

App version

19.2

Where did you get the app from?

F-Droid

Android version

16

Device model

Motorola Edge 70

Steps to reproduce

Open a mailbox filled with read emails.

Expected behavior

The items are easy to read, like in the promotional images.

Actual behavior

The items are hard to read, because of the low contrast between foreground and background color. They look "greyed out" or "deactivated", like they don't matter instead of being the main content.

Left is the screenshot featured in the promotional images in the app stores and on the website, right is what it looks like on my phone (I recreated the emails):

Screenshots

I've had this issue since I switched to Thunderbird a few months ago. Coming from the Fastmail app it immediately stood out to me, by now I'm sort of used to it.

Seems this or something similar was reported by others last year too and apparently fixed at some point? E.g. #9720, #9596.

Logs

k9mail-logs.txt

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reproducing the message-list view on Android 16 and compare the reported screenshots, then trace the message-list styling and color choices in the Thunderbird for Android codebase. Done means read-message rows have clear foreground/background contrast and no longer appear greyed out or deactivated.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
android, kotlin
Domain
accessibility, mobile
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Active
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
62/100

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