I’m experiencing an issue with KDE Plasma 6 where my volume notifications suddenly became unreadable—black text on a black background. This problem appeared without any updates or new installations. Before this, the notifications were white text on a black background, as expected.
I’m using the “Breath” theme, and I noticed that when I switch to “Breath Light” or “Breath Dark,” the problem goes away, and the notifications display correctly. However, I prefer using the standard “Breath” theme, and I’d like to find a solution without having to permanently switch to another theme.
I’ve searched online but haven’t found a clear fix for this issue. Has anyone else encountered this problem, and is there a way to resolve it while keeping the “Breath” theme?
( Until somewhat recently this was not the case and many icons were sourced from the Plasma Style itself. )
I can reproduce this behavior if I choose a poorly matching icon theme in relation to my plasma style. ‘Breeze Dark’ icons while using ‘Breeze Light’ plasma style, and so forth.
But that is to be expected.
I may also wonder … what breath packages do you have? There are different ones for plasma6.
pacman -Qs breath
Dubious.
Maybe you believe this because you didnt ‘see’ these changes until a reboot, after performing upgrades however long prior.
The only other option is something that was done … such as a configuration added or changed by the system administrator. Maybe an icon theme selection? It has to be one or the other - otherwise the system would be exactly the same as it was before.
The default ones from Breath, I haven’t changed anything from the base theme.
local/plasma6-themes-breath 24.0.0-3
Breath theme for Plasma 6
local/plasma6-themes-breath-migration 24.0.0-3
Breath theme migration routine for kconf_update
local/sddm-breath-theme 24.0.0-3
Breath theme for SDDM
I am the only user, and I’m sure I haven’t modified or installed anything. In fact, something curious happened today: while applying the update that came out today, the volume notifications went back to being white on a dark background, as they were before, but after restarting, they turned dark on a dark background again.
… What does this mean?
There are no longer any supported Breath Icons.
Why not look at your icon theme selection and maybe even attempt changing the selection?
It means that I selected the global theme and didn’t change any of the basic settings. However, I had already tried changing the icons, but only using those from Oxygen do I get a partial result, as seen in the screenshot, and when I switch back to those from Breath, the problem reappears in its entirety.
Believe it or not, your suggestion solved the problem: I created a new user and opened a new session, in which the icons were displayed correctly. I closed the session, restarted, and logged in with my usual account, and the problem disappeared! Do you have any idea why?
Experience has shown that many insist on not rebooting (even after updates). A reboot is often needed after what can seem the most superficial of system changes.
Perhaps a reboot is all that was needed.
The new User account was only meant as diagnostic, but, clearly something shook loose in the process.
But as I wrote, I had already restarted several times, the last one just today after the Stable update, yet the problem was still there. Anyway, I’ll take your advice and be satisfied with having solved it, even though I would have preferred to understand what the cause was. Thanks for everything.