Add accessibility support (inverted color scheme, font sizes)

[ghost]

A contact of mine is struggling to use the app due to a lack of accessibility features. She has to use OS-level magnification to make messages readable, and also has issues with the default color scheme.

"I get about five half-length lines on my 27" screen. Is there any chance of getting the text in an easier format? Black on white is kind of like staring into the headlights of a car for me."

Please add support for accessibility-friendly color schemes, such as white text on a black or dark grey background, as well as increasing font sizes within the application.

[helenakos]

@sypherspace Thanks for the feedback. It's not on the near term roadmap but I am noting down your request.

[Strit]

Or atleast just a Dark Mode, like the android app has.

[ghost]

+1 for dark mode!

[adronysko]

Adding my vote for dark theme and the ability to change font sizes in the app. Shouldn't be too hard to implement and the existing Android dark theme in particular is, for me, a major advantage over other communication apps.

[fortran77]

For some of us, the desktop app's current color scheme of dark grey text on a light grey background is hard to read, but so is white text on a black background. Please also support plain black text rgb(0, 0, 0) on a plain white background rgb(255, 255, 255).

[qazip]

Is there any news regarding a dark theme? I find this to be absolutely necessary. I dread having to use wire on the desktop because of this..

[helenakos]

@qazip Hi, no news or committed date at this moment. Sorry to hear that you dread to use Wire on desktop because of this. This is a resourceful task for us and although it's on our wish list we won't be working on it in the next couple of months.

[kwaaak]

Dark mode on the desktop +1

[lectrode]

I'd also like to request this feature. This is a great app, but the white interface is very harsh on the eyes.

[rnelling]

I too would like a dark theme for the PC desktop application. Would prefer to use the app rather than in-browser.

[drgibbon]

Dark mode would be nice, but the user definitely needs to be able to control the font size. On my computer the font in Wire is just too small, which makes it very unpleasant to use. The user being able to read the text is a pretty rudimentary "feature", so I'm surprised that this issue was opened nearly a year ago without any attention since!

[alterdaemon]

Hello, any news on that? White Wire is hurting eyes, especially in the evening and at night! It's a health issue indeed!

you have ready to use themes right here: https://userstyles.org/styles/browse?search_terms=wire

[ehodzic]

Being able to customize application theme to one's liking has a very positive impact on impression of users. The competition allows one to change themes. Surely Wire can allow at the very least picking among a few pre-determined themes if not allow more powerful customization?

[Strit]

Even the new Skype got a light and dark theme to switch between. 🙂

[kinghat]

a dark theme like skype has(i hate saying it) would be nice. not sure about that gradient/image as the background of the contacts/conversations list either. just some pretty, solid, dark colors for the theme. the white burns the retinas.

[JitseB]

Dark theme! 😍

[ruxandra-valcu]

A dark theme would be very useful - as it is, using Wire at night leads to a lot of eye-fatiguing glare.

[FHTheron]

Dark themes have suddenly become a deal-breaker for a large number of users of almost all software. While it may not be on the roadmap, definitely know that not having a dark mode leaves a bad first impression.

As an example, https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/STRIDE-2 is the second ticket for a new product and it has received very little attention. It becomes a stale signal of priorities not aligning with the end users, but rather with the sales teams of companies who end up paying for the product.

Very few chat apps have dark modes on desktop (Ryver does it very well), so having it in Wire would be a small (but very effective) way of pushing Wire to the front of water cooler discussions about chat alternatives.

[OuTopos]

+1 for a dark theme. Thanks

[tmursch]

Dark theme for desktop client, when?

[Atn-D]

In my opinion, a dark interface is the only feature Wire (desktop) lacks.

[tmursch]

Wire Support - KG (Wire Support) Jun 4, 2:54 PM CEST

Thanks for writing in and for you request.

As of now, there are no plans to add dark them on our immediate roadmap. It is something we'd really like to add in the future, but for now, what's stopping us is design and development resources.

I'll make sure that your request makes it directly to the ears of our master product manager, and if there's anything else we can help with, don't hesitate to ask.

All the best, Kate Wire Support

[drgibbon]

@BadPackets Could you please comment on the (in my opinion) more substantive issue of the first post, that of being able to zoom the interface? All electron apps can do this, but I believe that the Wire devs disable this ability.

[tmursch]

Yes, that appears to be disabled. I did a quick comparison and Slack's client does have that option.

[drgibbon]

@BadPackets Right, and on many desktops (like mine) this is a genuine usability problem. I have two other electron-based applications (Signal and Riot) and I scale up those interfaces to make them useable for me. Wire unfortunately remains very small and difficult to see. A dark theme might be nice for usability, but being able to comfortably read the text is critical.

[ghost]

Why is dark theme and font changing still not added? It takes less than 2 minutes (literally) to do it client-side in the web browser. I doubt wire desktop is much different.

[nyggidy]

I can't believe that 2 years later dark theme is still not available for the desktop program, this is truly sad.

[ghost]

@nyggidy

It is indeed quite sad. Not only this, but if you look at the commits - a huge portion of the commits are maintenance-related, often from bots. It doesn't seem like there is much of any actual development work going on in the desktop application and that is sad. This combined with the terrible call performance (vast portion of my calls do not function well for more than 5 minutes) makes me wonder why I made all the effort with getting a number of my family and friends to install and use Wire - they were happy with alternatives like WhatsApp etc. IfI try to use the web version of wire with a custom dark style, I am faced with an hours-long login process which often doesn't complete before I shut my computer off.

[AzureHaze21]

For those still interested in a dark theme, I made a dark theme fork for me and my friend feel free to check it out, you can basically inject any custom css into the electron webview, I guess that's all we can do right now.

[Jfamig]

Hi @pyoung21 , I've been trying to find a way to contact you, but I have recently installed wire and would like some help installing your darkmode fork. How do you install it, exactly?

[AzureHaze21]

@Jfamig Which platform are you targeting? You can build it yourself by following the instructions in the README file. I'll make a release later so you can downlad it directly if you're unable to build it yourself.

[Jfamig]

@pyoung21 Win10 64bit

I have little experience with git and I tried following the instructions but I had a hard time getting the repo to build.

I would really appreciate a direct download so I can share it with my friends who use wire as well, who also have little experience building from github. Thanks! :D

[AzureHaze21]

Windows build available on the project's repo (https://github.com/pyoung21/DarkWire/releases).

[Jfamig]

@pyoung21 got this upon clicking on the launcher. https://i.imgur.com/VjC0tiW.png

Log: https://pastebin.com/AWcjgX1u

I probably messed something very basic up, but I tried my own troubleshooting like closing wire and restarting. Still no luck.

Edit: Totally deleting the previous wire folder in Local appdata then installing fixed the problem. It is working now, thank you.

[AzureHaze21]

@Jfamig Make sure Wire.exe is not running (kill it with Task Explorer, this seems to be your error from line 293)

[ghost]

PLEASE DARK MODE FOR WINDOWS thanks in advance, cool to see theres a github for this

[maximbaz]

If you are feeling adventurous and willing to compile desktop app from sources, it is relatively easy to add Dark Theme. I did this for myself and described the steps here: HOWTO.

The theme itself is taken from https://github.com/wireapp/wire-webapp/pull/3434. It looks awesome right now, but there is no guarantee it will not break one day as the UI will change.

Enjoy 😉

[CharlesCage]

This is pretty frustrating. Would really like a dark mode. 👍

[ghost]

@maximbaz Thank you

[Termuellinator]

It really is a shame that there is a readymade pullrequest but it won't get merged due to support-reasons. To be brutally honest: the support-requirements for what is basically a theme are not really astronomical imho :/ Given that the wish for a dark mode is voiced for years now...

[tech189]

Another vote here for a dark theme! And if it's possible, it would be nice to link it to the macOS system wide dark mode so that the theme switches in Wire when the system is in dark mode.

[ffflorian]

The dark mode was implemented in https://github.com/wireapp/wire-webapp/pull/5415 and will be published soon :tada:

[ghost]

Thank you!

[joenepraat]

@ffflorian Can we please have a way to adjust the font size or at least be able to zoom the desktop app? For my eyes it's much to small.

[ffflorian]

@jeroenpraat in the WebApp you can press Ctrl++ to zoom in. I will check if we can use that in the desktop app, too.

[knghtbrd]

You cannot zoom this way in the desktop app, sadly. (The ability to do so was explicitly disabled.)

[joenepraat]

@jeroenpraat in the WebApp you can press Ctrl++ to zoom in. I will check if we can use that in the desktop app, too.

@ffflorian Any update on this?

[joenepraat]

This issue is related to https://github.com/wireapp/wire/issues/2892