Change Preview Search Highlight Colour?

Open the Appearance preference pane. You can set the system default highlight color from the Highlight color drop down menu.



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System Preferences > Appearance > Highlight Color

This question comes up fairly regularly - so far, I haven't seen any method to change the gray secondary highlight colour. When searching using the search field in "Preview.app", the "focus" is on the "drawer", and the main document is in the background, where highlighted items appear in gray.

At this point, tabbing a few times to switch the focus to the document should cause the highlighted term to appear in whatever primary highlight colour was selected in the "Appearance" pref pane. While keeping focus on the main document, you can cycle through other occurences of the search term using ⌘G, which should continue to display matches in the primary highlight colour.

If you were to suggest that this isn't the most effective GUI design, I wouldn't argue with you.

..." it's annoying that you can't change the highlight color JUST in Preview."...

Actually, the highlight colour is one that can be set app by app. Try opening "/Applications" > "Utilities" > "Terminal.app" and entering something along the lines of:<pre>defaults write com.apple.Preview AppleHighlightColor 'r g b'</pre>Each digit of the rgb values can range from 0 to 1. The change should be in effect the next time "Preview.app" is launched.

For example, you could set the highlight colour in the "Appearance" pref pane, then use this command to find out what values correspond to that colour:<pre>defaults read -g AppleHighlightColor</pre>Then substitute those values in the first command. Once "Preview.app" has its own colour setting, the general highlight can be switched to something else in the "Appearance" pref pane, and "Preview.app" should retain its own custom setting.

At this point, tabbing a few times to switch the
focus to the document should cause the highlighted
term to appear in whatever primary highlight colour
was selected in the "Appearance" pref pane. While
keeping focus on the main document, you can cycle
through other occurences of the search term using ⌘G,
which should continue to display matches in the
primary highlight colour.

If you were to suggest that this isn't the most
effective GUI design, I wouldn't argue with you.

There are a bunch of posts on this topic, and this is the only effective answer I've seen (other than the day Apple decides it makes sense to highlight the search results from the attached drawer). Perhaps I should send them a few sample documents, so they can see how hard it is to see the shaded grey on the page.

I've learned to use biovizier's suggestion (using the tab to change focus).
Found I can type the "TAB" 12 times (yes twelve), or I can type "Shift+TAB" 2 times.

Hi Kappy

Not saying it'll happen to you but I, and a few others, have been <edited by Host> for mentioning that part of the Terms Of Use. See 4.2.2

Steve

Hi Steve!

The New TOU were posted and announced on May 1, 2007.
Responses that referred to the "P" word, and posted prior to that date, have not as yet been edited.

ali b

Hi Ali

I see, wasn't paying attn to the date of his post (March, not May). Sorry. For a minute I thought your date referred to 5th January, then I remembered that you write MM/DD/YY & I write DD/MM/YY. I suppose, since these posts were before the new TOUs, they won't be touched?

Steve

Thanks Steve!

I changed the date format in my response, to avoid any further confusion for overseas members.

"I suppose, since these posts were before the new TOUs, they won't be touched?"
Trying to answer that question, may be speculation, and that is also not allowed. 😉

ali b

Oops, of course you right (smack back of hand). 🙂