I upgraded to version 4.2 on a couple of machines running 26.2 and the PDF files now all have black backgrounds rather than white.
I have ‘Dark’ chosen under Settings → Appearance but it has always been like this (for years) and the PDFs always displayed normally. The issue has cropped up with the 4.2 upgrade.
Any hints would be appreciated.
This is not a bug. It’s dark mode support for PDF documents, as requested by our userbase. Disable Settings > General > Appearance > Use dark background for documents to show them in light mode. A hidden preference to control the appearance just for PDF documents is planned for a future release.
I’d like to second this for PDFs specifically (otherwise I rather like the dark background, e.g., for markdown files). A context menu item or similar to switch backgrounds quickly (with a keyboard shortcut would be even better).
I don’t seem to be able to disable the setting you describe, but I can see it! Is there a way to make this setting option “active”?
It seems you can only change that setting while dark mode is active.
I don’t know if that’s intentional. If it is, I guess the logic would be to lock it unless the effect can be observed immediately?
Yes, that is exactly the point. That settings is only enabled if macOS’ dark mode is enabled.
Thanks. Yes, dark mode was inactive. Got it now!
