Set color of tabs on macOS

[thenktor]

Hi,

I wonder how the color of the tabs is set on macOS.

Those two examples:
theme = iTerm2 Tango Dark

theme = ayu

With the Tango theme I can distinguish the tabs without problems, the ayu theme makes it pretty hard.

I cannot see the obvious color code for the tabs:

❱ bat -p iTerm2\ Tango\ Dark
palette = 0=#000000
palette = 1=#d81e00
palette = 2=#5ea702
palette = 3=#cfae00
palette = 4=#427ab3
palette = 5=#89658e
palette = 6=#00a7aa
palette = 7=#dbded8
palette = 8=#686a66
palette = 9=#f54235
palette = 10=#99e343
palette = 11=#fdeb61
palette = 12=#84b0d8
palette = 13=#bc94b7
palette = 14=#37e6e8
palette = 15=#f1f1f0
background = #000000
foreground = #ffffff
cursor-color = #ffffff
cursor-text = #000000
selection-background = #c1deff
selection-foreground = #000000

❱ bat -p ayu
palette = 0=#000000
palette = 1=#ff3333
palette = 2=#b8cc52
palette = 3=#e7c547
palette = 4=#36a3d9
palette = 5=#f07178
palette = 6=#95e6cb
palette = 7=#ffffff
palette = 8=#323232
palette = 9=#ff6565
palette = 10=#eafe84
palette = 11=#fff779
palette = 12=#68d5ff
palette = 13=#ffa3aa
palette = 14=#c7fffd
palette = 15=#ffffff
background = #0f1419
foreground = #e6e1cf
cursor-color = #f29718
cursor-text = #e6e1cf
selection-background = #253340
selection-foreground = #e6e1cf

[taylrfnt]

Those look like native macOS tabs. I believe the theme palette is used by macOS system logic to compose the colors.

[thenktor]

But why does it change, when changing the terminal colors? So far the iTerm color scheme is the only one with that look. All others that I have tried use the black version.

[taylrfnt]

The "native" style uses the native macOS titlebar with zero customization. The titlebar will match your window theme (see window-theme).

Source: https://ghostty.org/docs/config/reference#macos-titlebar-style

I am not well-versed in the macOS native tab system, but as far as I know, native tabs take colors from the theme of the system & application.

This is a very difficult conversation to have when comparing two totally different themes in two totally different terminal emulators, but you can also try using the tabs style (same source as above):

The "tabs" style is a completely custom titlebar that integrates the tab bar into the titlebar. This titlebar always matches the background color of the terminal. There are some limitations to this style: On macOS 13 and below, saved window state will not restore tabs correctly. macOS 14 does not have this issue and any other macOS version has not been tested

[thenktor]

This is a very difficult conversation to have when comparing two totally different themes in two totally different terminal emulators

To make things clear: The above screenshots are both from Ghostty.

But it seems I hit some bug. Now after playing with the config options and restarting Ghostty it seems that all color themes show the grey titlebar/tabs. Not the black one anymore 🫤 👍
Maybe related to switching between titlebar native and tabs, I don't know. The black tabs screenshot seems to use the same colors as with using titlebar tabs.

[taylrfnt]

Ah, I apologize, I did misread your screenshot labels. Maybe a maintainer has some info on how the color values are passed into the macOS native tabs, or there might be some Apple documentation somewhere.