Which dark and light themes does Contact have?
Contact by Zaweba has six themes: Midnight, Aubergine, Slate and Lime, Daylight, Lavender and High contrast, each checked so text stays readable.
Contact by Zaweba has six named themes: Midnight, Aubergine, Slate and Lime, Daylight, Lavender and High contrast. The default look is deep purple with lime yellow. Daylight suits bright rooms with dark text on a light background, and High contrast uses a black background for easier reading. Every theme is checked for contrast so text stays readable.
Dark themes for long days
A program you keep open from morning to evening is easier to live with in a dark theme, particularly in a dim room or late in the day. The default deep purple with lime yellow is one such look, calm to sit with and bright where it needs to be, so new counts and highlights catch the eye.
The other named themes, Midnight, Aubergine, Slate and Lime and Lavender, give you different moods to choose from. The names hint at the colours, but the honest advice is to click through each one with your own lists on screen, because a theme looks different with a busy Inbox in it than it does empty. Switching costs nothing, so try them all before settling.
Light themes for bright rooms
If your desk is by a window, or you simply prefer dark text on a light background, Daylight is the one to try. It has the look most documents and websites use, which some people find easier to read for long stretches.
High contrast for comfort
High contrast has a black background and is there for easier reading. If text in other themes ever looks faint, or you notice yourself leaning towards the screen, it is worth switching. It is a full theme, not a stripped-down mode, so everything works the same.
Checked so text stays readable
Each theme is checked for contrast. A theme can look striking at first glance and still tire your eyes after an hour if text sits too close in colour to its background. The checks mean you can choose purely on taste.
Some things stay the same whichever theme you pick. The gold stars on rows and in record headers keep one gold style in every theme, so ratings are recognisable everywhere. Highlight colours for the navigation boxes, one of ten for each box, are tuned for each theme, so switching themes doesn't spoil the colours you have chosen.
Choosing and changing a theme
Try a theme for a full day before deciding. First impressions favour bold colours; what matters is how it feels in the late afternoon.
Match the theme to the room. A sunny office often needs a light theme, a dim corner a dark one.
If you set Contact up on another PC, File > Export settings writes your settings, rules, templates, tags, customer folders and list layouts to one JSON file, and Import on the other PC shows what would change first.
Other ways to change the look
Themes change colours, but Contact has other settings that shape how it looks. The reading pane can sit Right, Bottom or Off. Density settings change how tightly rows are packed. Row layout chooses which fields appear between a record's name and its status, such as stars, tags, last message, chase date, notes, order number and message count. Together with a theme, those let you make Contact comfortable for the way you work and the screen you have.
