Many parts of Dark theme Audacity are not really "dark"

[petersampsonaudacity]

Describe the bug
Many parts of Dark theme Audacity are not really "dark" - in particular

1. Error messages
2. Preferences dialogs
3. Menu bar
4. Device toolbar
5. horizontal and vertical toolbars
6. Selection toolbar
7. Drop-down menus
8. History window
9. Plug-in Manager
10. Log file window
11. dialogs for Effects, Generators and Analyzers
12. The "affordances" drag bars for tracks and clips introduced in 3.0.4
13. there may be more ...

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Edi> Preferences>Interface
2. In Theme, select "Dark"
3. Observe: many parts are not really dark'

Expected behavior
A more consistent darkness

Screenshots

Additional information (please complete the following information):

• All OS
• All Audacity versions since Themes were introduced

Additional context
Also applies to High Contrast theme.

[petersampsonaudacity]

Another example was previously logged on Bugzilla 1717
Bug 1717 - ENH: On opening new project in Dark or High Contrast theme, area to left of horizontal scroll bar is filled with Light theme color
https://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1717

This also occurs if you set dark theme, exit Audacity and then relaunch.

Sometimes during the use of Audacity in Dark theme that area can turn black, as can be seen in the images above in this thread - but I cannot find repeatable steps to reproduce this transition.

[petersampsonaudacity]

Flagging @Tantacrul as a UX/GUI issue

[LWinterberg]

this is a consequence of wxWidgets using system-native elements for many things. (with the little area in the latest comment possibly being a bug). There's very little to be done here until we switch to a system that actually allows us to touch these buttons and design them ourselves (eg Qt), hence why I marked this as known issue.

[zag2me]

Is there any news on this or a roadmap?
I've just been trying to roll out 3.13 to our school departments, but our music department mentioned that the interface looks like its from the 1990's :)
They want to buy Adobe products instead :(

[LWinterberg]

This is on the roadmap for Audacity 4.0

They want to buy Adobe products instead :(

On a school level, I don't think there's much that Audition can do that Audacity can't do, so I recommend to push back on that particular ask. However, if they want a DAW (ie a thing that also can handle MIDI and make music from within the computer), I recommend Bandlab or Cakewalk (both free)