Messy UI under macOS Big Sur Dark Mode (20.12.0 Qt version)

[tlongabaugh]

Hi,

I am updating my installers to use the latest InstallBuilder for Qt 20.12.0, so as to take advantage of the ARM support (I need this to fix the "Force Eject" issue on M1 Macs that I had previously reported). I am building with the osx-x64_86 and osx-arm64 values for osxPlatforms, so as to build a Universal Binary.

This all seems to be working properly, but unfortunately when the installer is run on macOS Big Sur with "Dark Mode" enabled, the installer UI becomes a bit of a mess and hard to read in places (see attached screenshot). There's black text on a dark background, some portions of the UI have a white background, buttons have a white background, etc. Interestingly, this doesn't happen when the installer is run as Intel (under Rosetta), just as an ARM application.

Would it be possible to clean up the UI, such that the installer has a consistent color scheme? Perhaps the colors could be matched to the native macOS package installers? Or as a stopgap, maybe there could be away to force the installer to run with "Light Mode" all of the time, until a better UI can be implemented?

I would love to take advantage of the latest ARM support, but I'm hesitant to ship an installer looking the way it currently does.

Thanks,

Tom

[michieldhont_]

Hi @tlongabaugh,

Regarding the "Force Eject"  issue, we have been able to reproduce the issue on the DTK, but not in a commercial M1 computer, we will investigate it further.

About running IB in dark mode, our engineers are looking into it. As a workaround, you can force it to not use dark mode by modifying the Info.plist. For example, using the below snippet:

<postBuildActionList>
    <substitute>
        <files>${installbuilder_output_filename}/Contents/Info.plist</files>
        <type>exact</type>
        <substitutionList>
            <substitution>
                <pattern>&lt;key&gt;NSHighResolutionCapable&lt;/key&gt;</pattern>
                <value>&lt;key&gt;NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance&lt;/key&gt;
        &lt;true/&gt;
        &lt;key&gt;NSHighResolutionCapable&lt;/key&gt;</value>
            </substitution>
        </substitutionList>
    </substitute>
</postBuildActionList>

Could you write us to private support so we can better track the issue?

Regards,

Michiel

[tlongabaugh]

Hi,

Ah, that is good to know re: "Force Eject" on the M1. I've been able to verify on my end, so for the moment I will continue to use the Intel-only installer.

Thanks for the workaround with the Info.plist. I'll log the issue in private support ASAP - currently I'm not able to get all of the way through the linked steps (it looks like the InstallBuilder license is not correctly tied to my VMWare account here) but once I resolve that I will submit the issue.

-Tom