Need to change the link font color in Notes

Question

Need to change the link font color in Notes

After using a fairly decent Notes app for several years, I decided to ditch it after a recent update managed to delete a bunch of notes as well as wrongly arbitrarily reassign them to various unrelated folders. The dev hasn't seen fit to help. So I decided to move everything into Apple's Notes since it had some review praise and it works between MacOS and iOS.

All started well with several hundred copied over until today when I copied a number that included links. Oh crap! I simply cannot read the links due to the extremely insensitive use of a very low contrast color - yellow perhaps? Now understand that I have decent vision - 20/20 corrected from a slight farsightedness and I don't have color blindness but trying to read the characters in a link in Notes is pure torture. Sorry for the hyperbole but it's true.

I've increased the display's contrast using the Accessibility System Pref, which really doesn't help, and I can't find anything else that alleviate the problem.

Is there any way to change this? I'm familiar with the Terminal so if there is a means to do this via Terminal, that would be a godsend.

We all seem to dislike the legacy blue or purple link colors but in most cases we've been able to alter them. However, in my worst nightmares I can't imagine what doofus at Apple decided that no contrast is the way to show a link. Not to mention the visually-impaired QA group that went ahead and signed off on this.

thanks!

-Tod

Edit: I also opened the Format > Font > Show Fonts, then highlighted a link. The text color icon at the top of the fonts table changed to mimic the yellow color of the link. Tried to change it there with no luck. Whose bright idea was it to limit user choices, especially those that are hard-wired into the OS?

Mac mini, OS X El Capitan (10.11), 10GB SDRAM 740 GB fusion drive

Posted on Apr 22, 2016 3:28 PM

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Answer 1

dialabrain

Level 10

136,121 points

Dec 2, 2017 5:25 PM in response to FibreMan_85_125

Notes is part of macOS. You can send feedback here…

Feedback - macOS - Apple

You can select El Capitan as the operating system if you like.

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Answer 2

Dec 2, 2017 4:55 PM in response to TodFromIndiana

Ha! The joke's on us. I followed the 'feedback' link only to discover there is no feedback section for Notes! Nice. Apple got all the feedback it wanted, thank you very much.

But you asked, "Who's the doofus...?" It the same doofus who thinks light grey text on white is stylish. Those morons are out to kill the Mac, and may yet succeed.

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Answer 3

bechard

Level 1

49 points

Jan 3, 2018 5:56 PM in response to TodFromIndiana

This seems more a matter of colour supremacy than deficiency. Who are the folks who find this baked-in "feature" plausible?

Maybe this decision was meant to have a deterrent effect, for copy-write issues, or some other deterring reason?

Possibly, a hard "fix"due to the cross platform functionality with the iOS Notes? (No idea if I am using "cross platform functionality" correctly.)

Maybe I am truly not seeing it "write". 🙂

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Answer 4

Jan 5, 2018 10:47 AM in response to TodFromIndiana

I agree, I was forced by updating apps to go with High Sierra from El Capitan and I'm shocked by the amount of oversights. I have also been with Apple since 86 and for the first time, I'm seriously looking around at faster machines and alternative platforms.

They have become the big blue they originally threw a hammer at.

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Answer 5

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,434 points

Mar 24, 2017 10:48 AM in response to dadnukum

On El Capitan, and macOS Sierra, dragging and dropping the Safari address bar link of this post, into the Apple Notes application, results in the following gray rectangle — that remains a hyperlink. It works the same way for all other web page links that are drag & drop onto the Notes application. No yellow snow here.

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Answer 6

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,434 points

Mar 24, 2017 12:58 PM in response to dialabrain

That's so twilight zone. 😉

What happens when you select Safari's Edit menu : Substitutions : Smart Copy/Paste, and in Notes, Edit menu : Substitutions :

I am thinking the Smart Copy/Paste and/or Smart Links on the Notes side is the deciding reason it works for me.

Firefox 52.0.1 will drag and drop that worthless yellow link, or a copy link/paste will drop unlinked, black text.

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Answer 7

Jan 5, 2018 10:30 AM in response to dialabrain

They list every iOS app except notes for discussion. It seems they know about it but could care less.

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Answer 8

Apr 11, 2017 9:56 AM in response to TodFromIndiana

There is no way to change the color of the links but you can do the following to fix this:

Right-click on the yellow link
From the context menu, select Remove Link

You will notice that the link text now changes to black* and the actual link no longer activates by just clicking on it. However, you can still use it as a hyperlink by selecting it (just double-click) and then right-clicking to select the Open URL option from the context menu. If you prefer, you can also change the text colour to something you prefer.

*If the URL is a full URL (i.e. it starts with http: etc), then you will need to manually change the text colour from the default yellow after removing the link.

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Answer 9

Jan 16, 2017 9:54 AM in response to TodFromIndiana

Yeah, Apple used to be very good in designing their computer hardware and software.

Nowadays, they are having problems. macOS, iCloud, etc. have issues (just Google them). And now this.. a YELLOW text on a WHITE background... who would think this is OK?

UI design is a MUST for ANY software development and for a company like Apple to do this? Unimaginable..

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Answer 10

Jan 16, 2017 1:05 PM in response to Community User

@ striders and everyone following this thread:

1. I have totally given up on Notes as nearly all my notes include links. I am now an extremely satisfied user of Bear, which is available through the MAS and has an iOS version as well. Sync through iCloud, Markdown, choice of themes. The dev team is extremely responsive to support requests and there is an active user forum. They have a script to import notes from Evernote and maybe from Notes. There are a few downsides for some users (no Dropbox sync, subscription model $15/year enables the sync feature-otherwise free).

2. I have been using Macs since 1985 and have never wavered in my support for the h/w and s/w. I've been an Appleseed beta tester for some years but I opted out when Sierra came along. Just so you know, Appleseed tests are brought in in the late beta stages and are often useability tests. When I installed the first Appleseed beta, I was astonished at how unprofessional and buggy it was at that stage. I wiped my test drive and will never install Sierra because even now it is the worst OS foisted upon users (I can't speak for any Windows version as I've never used it).

/rant

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Answer 11

Jan 16, 2017 1:57 PM in response to TodFromIndiana

@Tod

Couldn't have said better and thanks for letting us know about the Bear app. I am going to check it out.

Apple have always been great about design, whether it was for the Macs or iOS. But to simply put a BRIGHT yellow font on a white background is mind blowing. Any UI design student will know that such color combination is bad for the reader.

Slowly but surely I am starting to move away from Apple built-in app and service.

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Answer 12

Jan 16, 2017 2:37 PM in response to Community User

@striders,

I think that the powers that be at Apple are not too interested in their productivity apps. For instance, I still use the very old Pages app (with the inkwell icon) simply because the new one canned a whole bunch of features. The one that is a necessity for my work is linking of text boxes. Of course Apple's lack of interest in its 1st party apps leaves lots of room for indie devs to fill the vacuum.

That said, I think the Mac hardware and core software (except Sierra) are outstanding products worth the expense

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Answer 13

dadnukum

Level 1

32 points

Feb 1, 2017 5:15 AM in response to TodFromIndiana

So, I guess it's ok for Apple to produce a product that can't be used by anyone with vision issues? I'm in my 50's and have enough trouble reading light grey on bright white, which seems to have become acceptable all over the place, but reading light yellow on bright white is not only discriminitory, but proves that no one at Apple cares about their users, and no one at Apple uses the Notes application. I wonder what they use? Disgraceful.

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Answer 14

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,434 points

Mar 24, 2017 3:15 AM in response to funkyguitar

Did you actually test this on the Apple Notes application?

One can copy/paste, and copy link/paste — and 100% of the time, the result is the yellow link color, because the Note application is applying its own programmed, link color style. This behavior is reproducible on El Capitan 10.11.6, and on macOS Sierra 10.12.3.

If one drags and drops a link from Safari into Apple Notes, the link appears as a thin, black, outlined box of text/graphics content from that link article, and retains its link functionality, without the ghastly link color.

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Answer 15

dadnukum

Level 1

32 points

Apr 11, 2017 10:08 AM in response to dy.goldfeder

That's not a valid workaround, as you're removing the link. The problem here is some bizarre developer's idea that yellow is a good color to work with, or that Apple is simply ignoring it's built-in applications completely. Or, perhaps, this is yet another symptom of Apple abandoning the Mac, latest news notwithstanding.

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