Use a better background color on full-line changes for colorblind users

[ahatzz11]

The color difference in this red/green is almost impossible to see for colorblind users, especially with the dark theme.

Here is an example of another git-client that has some better colors:

I saw an issue previously that said it was hard to implement custom colors, which is fine, but tweaking the defaults would be excellent.

[DanPristupov]

We use same colors as GitHub.

[DanPristupov]

I think now we can introduce a custom colors for the High Contrast mode in MacOS (starting from 10.14 Mojave)

[ahatzz11]

I don't use a dark github for this exact reason! I've always wished they had better colors. Unfortunately I don't have mojave (and probably won't for a while because my updates are controller by the enterprise).

[ahatzz11]

If custom colors are difficult, maybe a second color option within the app would be more reasonable?

[DanPristupov]

Now macOS already has a feature to manage colors and we are going to migrate to it completely soon. I'm planning to remove the dark theme support from pre-Mojave versions because it's built on hacks and I don't have an ability to test it anymore.

[photomoose]

It would be nice if we could customise the diff colours within the app rather than having to rely on the macOS features. Although the colour blind options in macOS work, it also distorts the colours in all my other applications, which is something I don't want to happen.

[laurentvaills]

+1 to have more suitable colours on the diff with the dark theme, because the current ones are really hard for colorblind users. I wanted to report that issues but saw that it was already reported quite few times.

I have 2.0.4 and still the difference of color is not good like in this screenshot:

A + and - on the lines would actually be very useful . Or an option "never use dark theme" (I can see there is "Always use dark theme").

[danhowelldev]

I'm another one of the 8% of males and .5% of females that are red-green colorblind.

Please please consider making the contrast between the colors greater. The GitHub dark view is also not accessible and should not be used as a standard. And also agree with the comment above about adding + and - to the lines.

Something like this (I just maxed the red and green in GitHub diff view)

OLD:

Change (likewise for green):

NEW:

[photomoose]

91.5% of developers are male (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1126823/worldwide-developer-gender/) - and 8% of males are colourblind - so assuming averages, this works out to be about 7% of your user base.

You've got a great app, I really like it - but the $49.99 licence is inconceivable to me if I cannot see the diffs.

Please consider adding the "+/-" clues as suggested by @danhowelldev as a bare minimum, then work on the colour customisation - or at least choose shades that are easily distinguishable. I don't care what the colours are, as long as there is an obvious difference in colour/contrast.

Try running the app through colourblind simulators to simulate what we see:

[DanPristupov]

Fork will use a special color scheme if you enable High Contrast mode in the system preferences:

[photomoose]

@DanPristupov Could you introduce an option to enable this special colour scheme without having to change the OS system preferences? I don't really want to use the High Contrast mode for everything; it's just Fork where I need to distinguish colours.

[DanPristupov]

No, I can't. This is a macOS feature.

[danhowelldev]

I'm really confused. You keep just discarding these concerns and saying we need to use the high contrast mode. That's ridiculous, I don't want to see all my applications in some glaring high contrast view. Please just change the default colours.

[bennyty]

This is my number 1 issue with Fork. Literally every other thing about your app I love. But I frequently struggle to tell if an isolated change is an addition or subtraction.

I understand you're probably using Apple's auto-switching color pallets. That's why it was easy to add a high contrast mode but hard to have an app specific toggle for the color scheme.

How about this option mentioned above. Other apps have dark modes that have correct & usable contrast so setting an OS level dark mode makes sense. However Fork's contrast is too low so I'd like to disable Fork's dark theme. Instead of the "always dark" checkbox: Light, Dark, or Auto (match OS).

Or an option "never use dark theme" (I can see there is "Always use dark theme").

[EvCholesky]

+1 vote for another user who really enjoys using your app but cannot tell the difference between the add and remove colors.

[photomoose]

@EvCholesky if you enable the "Show -+ marks" setting in Preferences -> General -> Diff View, it's a great help. Colours still suck though.

[kevinrenskers]

Today I decided to try out Fork after seeing some positive messages on Mastodon. And yeah.. it's basically not usable for me either.

Please use SourceTree's color, as they are much much better:

Compared to Fork:

If you're not colorblind then you probably don't get what the fuss is about, but trust us: changing the colors would be a huge difference for us. Until then I can't use this app and won't be paying for it.