Dark theme contrast is too low for comfortable use

[IARI]

Hi, first of all: thanks for the work on Drydock. I have been migrating from WUD and the project is becoming very useful for my setup.

One issue I am running into daily is the dark theme contrast. In light mode the UI is mostly readable for me, but in dark mode, which is what I normally use, a lot of text feels too low-contrast against the background. The practical result is that parts of the UI become tiring or even difficult to read, especially when scanning tables, secondary text, badges, labels, and details panels.

I realize visual preferences are subjective, but this feels more like an accessibility/readability issue than a matter of taste. I think either the text color needs to be brighter, the dark backgrounds need to be darker, or both. The goal would be to bring the dark theme closer to accessible contrast levels for normal body text and small UI text.

Would you be open to revisiting the dark theme contrast tokens?

[scttbnsn]

Agreed, some of the dark theme sits too close to the background. A contrast pass over the dark palette is planned for the 1.7 line; it didn't make the current RCs but it's on the roadmap. If there are specific screens where it's worst for you, list them here and they'll get priority in that pass.

[scttbnsn]

This shipped in v1.7.0-rc.5, out now.

The pass covered all six dark themes. Secondary and muted text, the five tone colors (warning, caution, danger, success, info) and both accent colors were all under 4.5:1 against the surfaces they're actually painted on, so those token values went up to clear 4.5:1 against the worst real pairing for each, keeping each palette's hue. The worst two going in were muted text on an elevated surface at 1.57:1 and secondary text in a warning dialog at 1.33:1.

Three of them weren't fixable by changing a value:

• The update-status condition rows painted the same muted tint their parent section had already painted, so two tints compounded into a surface no text color could clear without washing out the whole muted/secondary hierarchy. They use the card surface they already carried now.
• Toast surfaces mixed their tone color at 25%, which left tone-colored text between 3.65:1 and 3.94:1 in five of the six dark themes. They're at 15% now, the same mix as every other tone surface.
• The login and notification-test buttons hardcoded white text on the primary color, measuring as low as 1.45:1. There's a new --dd-primary-fg token that picks black or white per theme, whichever clears 4.5:1 against that theme's primary.

Colors that only ever paint borders, focus rings, icons and toggle fills are held to the 3:1 non-text target instead of being raised needlessly, so the palettes keep their character.

ghcr.io/codeswhat/drydock:1.7.0-rc.5 if you want it before 1.7.0 lands. If anything's still hard to read, say which screen and which theme and I'll measure that pairing.