Hi there. This is my first post. I used KiCad for a short while several years ago, but it’s been a while. I no longer have the old copy and so last night I downloaded latest version 7.x.x on Windows 10.
My problem is that I am getting older and my eyesight is not near what it used to be and KiCad’s color scheme is extremely hard to work with.
The screen in the schematic editor is somehow whiter and brighter than anything else on my computer that doesn’t have a dark theme. The font, with its blue on blue shadows, etc makes everything look blurry.
I also have the grid set to on and it’s so washed out I cannot perceive there being a grid at all, only if I zoom way far in do I see it, and it’s very dim.
It was so hard to look at my schematic I had to stop as it was making me literally nauseous.
I don’t mean to insult the folks that worked on the UI, but there used to be a focus on user accessibility in software so guys like me with vision problems weren’t shut out entirely.
Is there any way to change to a dark theme or adjust the colors so that I can see? I poked around in the various settings for a good hour and couldn’t find anything that worked for me.
I’d like to get back into KiCad. I used Altium at work, but I can’t use it for my personal projects.
Go to the main page in the plugin and content manager section. There you will find the section color schemes, upload the ones you need and then in the settings of the kikad you can select a theme
some color-themes can be installed with the packet manager (kicad main window, Plugin and content manager icon).
Some others may be found with a websearch.
Or if you know what you want you can change every color for yourself.
Selection of colortheme is done with Preferences–>Preferences–>schematicEditor–>Colors (and similar for pcb editor).
About the grid, you can change that too in the preferences (Upto a maximum of 10 pixels wide per grit dot) and it’s color (it is medium grey by default)
And in stead of (or additionally to) installing color themes, you can also create your own or modify them.
Getting a bigger and good quality monitor also helps. I’m looking at an 107cm 4k monitor, and you can get bigger monitors for reasonable prices each year…