VirtualBox does not respect dark themes

[oxoocoffee]

I just installed fresh Linux Mint Cinnamon 19.1 with Virtual Box 6. After starting vbox I noticed all text in vbox and help is gray on white background witch is very hard to read for me. I am attaching my screen shots

[oxoocoffee]

VirtualBox 6 test on Cinnamon 19.1

[oxoocoffee]

Cinnamon 19.1 Theme

[digifuzzy]

Main Window with mouse over settings toolbar button

[digifuzzy]

Settings Dialog display

[digifuzzy]

As suggested from forum ​post, adding more details and screenshots regarding this problem.

System: Artix Linux (Arch derivative).
Desktop: XFCE
Qt version: 5.12.0
VBox: 6.0.0r127442

qt5ct and qt5-styleplugins installed correctly. Variable QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME has been set. VLC and other qt5-based applications display normally with theme settings.

Screenshots added:

1) VBox6_Main_MouseOver - shows main virtualbox window with the mouse positioned over the settings toolbar button.
2) VBox6_Settings - shows the settings dialog presented

[janitor]

Summary changed at socratis behest.

[Socratis]

Thank you janitor! ;)

Idea from #18301 a duplicate of this one...

[Ore]

Screenshot of the main UI with Gnome Dark Mode.

[Ore]

This also impacts Gnome's dark mode. Generally dark mode is much easier on the eyes but with virtualbox it makes the UI all but unusable!

[rokm]

On Fedora, this issue is caused by incorrect QPalette::Mid color returned by the Adwaita-dark Qt theme. The issue has been fixed in the adwaita-qt git master: ​https://github.com/FedoraQt/adwaita-qt/issues/128

[franksmcb]

Virtualbox 6.x and dark themes Ubuntu MATE

[franksmcb]

Dark theme 20.04

[franksmcb]

This is occuring on VirtualBox 6.x releases using dark themes on Ubuntu MATE 18.04, 19.10, and 20.04.

[franksmcb]

Replying to OxOOCOFFEE:

I just installed fresh Linux Mint Cinnamon 19.1 with Virtual Box 6. After starting vbox I noticed all text in vbox and help is gray on white background witch is very hard to read for me. I am attaching my screen shots

This is occuring on Ubuntu MATE running VirtualBox 6.x releases on 18.04, 19.10, and 20.04

[Jags]

Screenshot: VirtualBox-6.1.97-136310-Linux_amd64 on Ubuntu MATE 20.04 64bit

[Jags]

Added a screenshot for VirtualBox-6.1.97-136310-Linux_amd64 on Ubuntu MATE 20.04 64bit.

It still doesn't respect dark theme as of build 6.1.97-136310. Thanks.

[oxoocoffee]

Not the best solution but better then default colors Tested on Ubuntu Mate 20.04

$ VirtualBox -style Fusion %U

[edwho]

Screen Capture of VirtualBox

[edwho]

Experiencing the same issue with Ubuntu 20.04 with yaru-dark theme on VirtualBox 6.1.6 (official version)

looking forward to have this issue resolved soon.

[csx]

Same issue for me (same as above screenshots, very white VBox GUI).

ubuntu 20.04 with 'virtualbox/focal,now 6.1.6-dfsg-1 amd64' installed from ubuntu repo.

[alain pannetier]

Workaround...

$ VirtualBox -style Fusion %U

...works... but you have to re-edit /usr/share/applications/virtualbox.desktop after each update.

[abletech-sb]

Replying to alain pannetier:

...works... but you have to re-edit /usr/share/applications/virtualbox.desktop after each update.

To avoid to re-edit desktop file after each update, you can copy it to user local folder:

cp /usr/share/applications/virtualbox.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/

[gtrider]

This is not only about dark theme. I just installed Ubuntu Mate 20.04 and have the same problem with every theme: white letters on white background.

[gtrider]

Ubuntu Mate 20.04

[liar666]

2 years later...

Exact same problem : white text on white background.. Totally unusable :{{

It was usable a few days ago, before system upgrade => is it on the VBox side of Qt side (I've got lots of problems in other softwares because of Qt upgrade :{ )

FYI:

VirtualBox Graphical User Interface Version 6.1.16_Ubuntu r140961 © 2004-2021 Oracle Corporation (Qt5.12.8)

Under Linux Mint 20...

[kpm]

+1 for fixing this please. I can confirm that this bug seems to be present on very latest RHEL8.4 release. When first opening Virtualbox Manager I get unusable white text on a white background, only when dragging the window can I see the white text items in the window turn light grey. This is using the default built-in dark mode Gnome theme called Adwaita-dark.

[kpm]

Screen grab showing issue on RHEL8.4 using default dark mode Gnome theme

[gombara]

This is most probably happening since the Qt lib. distributed with VirtualBox does not include gtk2 platform plugin and gtk2 style library files. This has been solved in our development branch which uses another version of Qt than 6.1 branch. Unfortunately we don't have time to tackle this on 6.1 branch.