feat: support icon color - followup by brisvag · Pull Request #277 · pyapp-kit/app-model

brisvag · 2026-04-03T10:20:38Z

Trying to pick up #130!

I fixed conflicts and brought it up to date. @tlambert03 was there something specific with that PR that was incomplete or you wanted to finish?

…into icon-color

codecov · 2026-04-03T10:24:28Z

Codecov Report

❌ Patch coverage is 88.52459% with 7 lines in your changes missing coverage. Please review.
✅ Project coverage is 99.43%. Comparing base (82f70b3) to head (39d2e1c).

Files with missing lines	Patch %	Lines
src/app_model/_app.py	58.33%	5 Missing ⚠️
src/app_model/types/_icon.py	83.33%	2 Missing ⚠️

❌ Your patch check has failed because the patch coverage (88.52%) is below the target coverage (100.00%). You can increase the patch coverage or adjust the target coverage.

Additional details and impacted files

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##             main     #277      +/-   ##
==========================================
- Coverage   99.78%   99.43%   -0.36%     
==========================================
  Files          31       31              
  Lines        1879     1931      +52     
==========================================
+ Hits         1875     1920      +45     
- Misses          4       11       +7

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tlambert03 · 2026-04-04T15:16:43Z

@brisvag, I think the main reason that PR stalled is because of the problem with theme changes. as mentioned in the first comment:

note that svg-colored icons don't currently change if the parent style sheet changes. This is just a generally harder thing to solve (and one of the few benefits of font-icons). However, we could, as magicgui does, attach QPallete change events here and auto-change icon colors in a future PR.

so, currently here:

  app = Application("myapp")
  app.theme_mode = "dark"  # or let it auto-detect

  Action(
      id="my.action",
      title="Do Thing",
      icon={"dark": "mdi:some-icon", "color_dark": "#FFFFFF", "color_light": "#000000"},
      ...
  )

The icon color is resolved once — at the moment the QAction or QMenuSubMenu is constructed. The resulting QIcon is a static pixmap/SVG baked with whatever color was chosen at creation time. If the user later, changes app.theme_mode from "dark" to "light", or wwitches their OS/Qt theme (causing the QPalette to change), nothing re-runs to_qicon(). The icons stay the old color. There's no signal, no QPalette change event listener, no theme_mode change signal — nothing triggers a re-render.

so, it feels like a partially implemented thing that will pretty quickly have a bug report or feature request

brisvag · 2026-04-20T11:45:44Z

Does something like this make sense?

One thing I noticed when testing this out with demo/model_app.py is that the "disabled" color seems to be hardcoded. Not sure if this is happening qt the qt level or if it's something that can/should be controlled by superqt when creating the icon.

tlambert03 · 2026-04-20T18:43:03Z

Does something like this make sense?

if you try it out and it works for you, it seems fine to me.

that the "disabled" color seems to be hardcoded. Not sure if this is happening qt the qt level or if it's something that can/should be controlled by superqt when creating the icon.

i need a bit more context: what did you observe and how did it differ from what you expected?

brisvag · 2026-04-22T14:01:41Z

Ok so I pushed some changes that should make this work as intended. I also updated temporarily the demo so you test it out, with 2 new buttons: the first changes "system theme" by changing the qpalette. The second changes the model's theme between light and dark manually.

When you swap theme, you'll see that while the icon theme color overrides (blue and red) apply correctly to the two new buttons, they don't affect the scissors icon as long as it's disabled: that grey-out colopr is hardcoded somewhere else. IMO it should be a desaturated version of the provided color?

brisvag · 2026-05-13T09:13:19Z

@tlambert03 ping in case this slipped through the cracks!

tlambert03 · 2026-05-18T14:33:48Z

I'll have a look today... but can you make sure that things like pre-commit/pyright are green? That will definitely prevent merge

brisvag · 2026-05-18T15:01:18Z

I was mainly asking for feedback on my last comment above, before I lock in in terms of implementation and solve the remaining tests/issues. Some of the changes I made (mainly the example) are temporary and it's just to make it easier for you to see the issue :)

tlambert03 · 2026-05-18T15:13:23Z

got it thanks! lemme give you a better review soon

tlambert03

Looks mostly good to me! A couple comments inline. Main issues are the demo code (useful, but currently incomplete in a confusing way)... and the per-action eventFilter causing a potential performance problem

tlambert03 · 2026-05-18T18:13:55Z

+    types.Action(
+        id="switch_theme",
+        icon={
+            "dark": "fa6-solid:circle-half-stroke",
+            "color_dark": "#ff0000",
+            "color_light": "#0000ff",
+        },
+        title="Switch dark/light theme",
+        status_tip="Switch between dark and light theme.",
+        menus=[{"id": MenuId.HELP}],
+        callback=MainWindow.switch_theme,
+    ),
+    types.Action(
+        id="switch_theme_model",
+        icon={
+            "dark": "fa6-solid:circle-half-stroke",
+            "color_dark": "#ff0000",
+            "color_light": "#0000ff",
+        },
+        title="Switch dark/light theme",
+        status_tip="Switch between dark and light theme.",
+        menus=[{"id": MenuId.HELP}],
+        callback=MainWindow.switch_theme_model,
+    ),


these two actions are very useful in the demo... but they seem to be copy/paste incomplete. They have the same icon/tooltip/title, etc... but do different things?
please also add docstrings to the two methods switch_theme[_model], so it's actually clear what the methods are supposed to be demoing.

tlambert03 · 2026-05-18T18:24:45Z

        )
        if submenu.icon:
-            self.setIcon(to_qicon(submenu.icon))
+            self.setIcon(


does this need to react to theme_mode_changed like the QCommandAction did?

tlambert03 · 2026-05-18T18:27:08Z

+    color_dark: str | None
+    color_light: str | None


these may have been the names I used when I took a first stab at implementing this... but I'm realizing now it's a footgun. Do you think that color_dark sounds like "the color of the icon when it should be dark" (e.g. for the light theme) ... rather than "the color of the icon when the theme is dark". If so, maybe let's make it dark_theme_color and light_theme_color? (more verbose, but less confusing)

tlambert03 · 2026-05-18T18:31:00Z

-            self.setIcon(to_qicon(command_rule.icon))
-        self.setIconVisibleInMenu(command_rule.icon_visible_in_menu)
+        self._update_icon_theme()
+        QApplication.instance().installEventFilter(self)


for an app with hundreds of actions, I fear the costs of this per-action eventFilter: every QCommandRuleAction installs its own event filter on the global QApplication. With N actions, every Qt event delivered to QApplication (mouse moves, etc.) traverses N filters... And events are fired all the time.
Can we consider one shared event filter at the Application level that triggers app.theme_mode_changed instead?

tlambert03 · 2026-05-18T18:34:20Z

+
+
+LIGHT_COLOR = "#BCB4B4"
+DARK_COLOR = "#6B6565"


just pointing out (for myself). This is an observable change for all users, even if they aren't touching the theme stuff. The old default icon color was black, and will now be gray. Probably not a big deal, but could perhaps be mentioned in the main PR comment for visibility

tlambert03 and others added 16 commits October 26, 2023 20:17

feat: icon color stuff

a2cea89

docs

2d1bd89

Merge branch 'main' into icon-color-iconify

6161c17

remove passs

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more docs

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Merge branch 'main' into icon-color-iconify

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coverage

eb7288e

move import

0cc07a6

remove color stuff

f64f908

Merge branch 'main' into icon-color

f684a35

style: [pre-commit.ci] auto fixes [...]

e358722

recover changes

99e529d

Merge branch 'icon-color' of https://github.com/tlambert03/app-model …

d1cd7b6

…into icon-color

style: [pre-commit.ci] auto fixes [...]

6f9aece

Merge branch 'main' of github.com:pyapp-kit/app-model into icon-color

f8620e6

style: [pre-commit.ci] auto fixes [...]

17b44e0

brisvag and others added 2 commits April 20, 2026 13:43

add event connection for app and qpalette

1889dc1

style: [pre-commit.ci] auto fixes [...]

ad09219

Merge branch 'main' into icon-color

5c58673

tlambert03 reviewed Apr 20, 2026

View reviewed changes

Comment thread src/app_model/backends/qt/_qaction.py Outdated

brisvag and others added 4 commits April 21, 2026 11:28

add qpalette for testing

c8a57d9

use event filter

c0bfa48

add other theme switching button for testing

4ea87b1

style: [pre-commit.ci] auto fixes [...]

e559ef2

tlambert03 added 2 commits May 15, 2026 08:11

Merge branch 'main' into icon-color

dd13cc5

Merge branch 'main' into icon-color

39d2e1c

tlambert03 reviewed May 18, 2026

View reviewed changes



		LIGHT_COLOR = "#BCB4B4"
		DARK_COLOR = "#6B6565"

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