macOS 10.16/11.0 Dark mode System Tray ambiguity

[tresf]

macOS 10.16 "Big Sur" has a dark mode ambiguity with the system tray area. Steps to reproduce:

1. Select a wallpaper that has a very light background in the area of the system tray
2. Watch the QZ Tray icon show the wrong color

This bug appears to be caused by the desktop's decision to choose a light-mode tray are when a dark-mode theme has been specified.

This is very similar to a problem that Windows 10 introduced when they too split the theming capabilities between the tray and the windowing. #597

[tresf]

Using Java's Robot class, I can take a screenshot and look at the luminosity of the top left pixel, but this has two disadvantages:

1. It asks for permission to record the screen when the screenshot occurs
2. It oddly fails when using the wallpaper "Catalina Silhouette". I assume the system menu-bar transparency is influencing this.

A second attempt is to grab the raw wallpaper instead using AppleScript:

osascript -e 'tell application "System Events"
   tell current desktop  
      get picture
   end tell
end tell'

... but due to the new Dynamic Wallpaper feature, this returns /System/Library/Desktop Pictures/Catalina Silhouette.heic, which isn't very helpful either, since heic files can't easily be read from Java and even if they could, knowing the current frame is going to be tricky.

The current frame is purported to live in ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/desktoppicture.db, meaning the following would expose the image, but this is a whole lot of work to detect something that the OS should have a way to report.

sqlite3 -readonly ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock/desktoppicture.db \
    'SELECT * FROM data ORDER BY rowID DESC;'

Any help is appreciated. If an API is available, the Xcode beta and Big Sur should expose it. 🤷‍♂️

[tresf]

OpenJDK has accepted the bug report here: https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8252015

@Vzor- is actively working on a patch. More to follow.

[tresf]

@Vzor- is almost done with the changes. I've proposed the changes to the AWT mailing list here: https://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/awt-dev/2020-September/016085.html

[dyorgio]

Hi @tresf, I created a hack to replace trayIcon created by JDK by an instance with setTemplate(true).
The code was only tested on Azul Zulu JRE (1.8 and 14) and BigSur.
Take a look: https://github.com/dyorgio/macos-tray-icon-fixer

[tresf]

Hi @tresf, I created a hack to replace trayIcon created by JDK by an instance with setTemplate(true).
The code was only tested on Azul Zulu JRE (1.8 and 14) and BigSur.
Take a look: https://github.com/dyorgio/macos-tray-icon-fixer

This works great, thanks for sharing! Will close this issue out once #745 is merged. I've linked your project on Stack Overflow, AdoptOpenJDK and privately to our JDK support provider. It's a very nice fix, thank you!!!!