Sidebar is always dark

Bear feedback
1

  • Bear Version: 2.6.6 (13972)

  • OS Version:

  • What were you doing: Looking at Bear UI

  • What feature did you use: Sidebar

  • What happened: It’s dark (see picture)

  • What did you expect to happen: It tracks theme (well, it should be Liquid Glass actually)

    Screenshot 2026-02-09 at 8.29.03 PM
    Screenshot 2026-02-09 at 8.29.03 PM1098×180 18.4 KB

2

Hello,

Unless I’m missing something, that’s how the sidebar should look accordingly to Bear’s Red Graphite theme. On macOS 26, we opted for a UI similar to Liquid Glass but without adopting it entirely, if this is what you are saying.

3

Just wanted to add my perspective. I also initially assumed this was a bug: the contrast between the sidebar and the rest of the UI feels extremely jarring to me. At first, I suspected the dark and light themes had become intermixed somehow. I tried toggling Bear themes, restarting the app, and even turning macOS dark mode on and off, but the appearance stayed the same. Eventually, I realized this must be the intended design.

4

@trix180 - I’ve toggled every theme, and the sidebar stays dark. If this is an intentional design decision, then consider this my request to rethink that :grinning_face: . As someone who chooses to use a light theme, it seems odd to have that choice seemingly overridden. Consider the reverse (light sidebar on dark window) – seems like it would be equally undesirable.

I’m on macOS 26, and the sidebar doesn’t look like Liquid Glass to me.

1 Like
5

Even Ayu or D.Boring?

6

Ah, Ayu and D.Boring do go lighter, which is great.

7

Would love it if Bear would allow folks to create their own themes already :upside_down_face:. A theme config file would be great. Most of the Bear themes do not hit for me.

1 Like
8

This issue of the sidebar being dark even in light themes is very frustrating. My favorite theme by far is the “High Contrast” theme as it offers the clearest and crispest text of all, which I love. But I have had to stop using it because the dark sidebar is simply too jarring. As @kenneth.orr mentioned above, consider how someone using a dark theme would feel about a light sidebar.

It is also frustrating that this issue of dark sidebars appearing within the “light” themes seems to be true for almost all of the light themes that are currently offered. And for the few light themes that have a light sidebar, the backgrounds tend to make the text seem a bit muddy.

While allowing users to create their own theme would certainly be one way to address this UI issue, for me this is more effort than I want to take on as CSS styling is beyond my capabilities. I would much prefer the simplicity of having for each theme a toggle setting where I can simply turn on/off whether the sidebar appears as light or dark within the parameters of that theme itself.