Preview Search Highlight Color

Hi!
Is there anyway to change the color used to for searched items on Preview? I noticed that you can change the background panel to just about any color using the color picker, but not the highlight color which I think would be far more useful. It is gray--not even my selected color for highlighting in the Appearance Preference. Most of the PDF files that I search have a grayscale background and the gray highlight does not show up. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!

yes, it's ridiculous. But your highlight color IS there, it's just that the highlighted word is not in focus at that moment.
Open a text-based PDF. Command-F and type in a term that you know is in the PDF. As you note, it will highlight, but appear to be in gray.
Now hit Tab...once or twice, depending on whether you have the toolbar at the top of the PDF page opened. If it is opened, Tab will initially take you to the "Page number" text box. A second "Tab" will then place the focus on your page. You'll then notice that the word is highlighted with your preferred color.
Unfortunately, as soon as you click on another search occurrence in the "drawer", the focus then shifts to the drawer, and your highlighted terms turn gray again.
Very frustrating and un-apple-like.

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RH9 Search highlighting color won't stick

When you use the Search feature and select "Highlight search results" the default color is gray. The word or phrase you're searching for displays in gray in all the topics in your search results.
From a usability standpoint, gray is a really bad color for highlighting. People are used to yellow, so if they saw that they would know what it means. Other colors would also send the correct message. But I kept getting emails from people asking me what's wrong with the online help because their screen was peppered with gray splotches.
So I went in and changed the highlighting color in the Webhelp > Search > Search Options dialog. All was well, until the next time I compiled the project. The color choice reverted to gray. Apparently you must go in and make your color choice EVERY TIME you update a project. If Adobe had chosen any color but gray as the default, I'd just leave it.
This is a problem because my project consists of one parent and about 20 child projects. I went in and changed the search highlighting color in all 21 projects, only to learn that the ones I'd since updated were displaying their highlights in gray. So users were getting blue highlights in some search results topics, and gray in others. It shouldn't do this.
If there's a fix, please advise.
Thank you!

Hi there
Hopefully Peter won't mind my offering another possible suggestion.
Try creating a new Single Source Layout. Just right-click the Single Source Layouts pod and create a new layout. My thought here is that perhaps the file holding the recipe for that layout may have somehow become a bit corrupt and creating a new SSL recipe may make things finally "stick".
Cheers... Rick
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Change Preview's highlight color when seraching PDF files.

I cannot see the gray highlight color when searching for key words in pdf files.
How can I change the color to something that is visible?
Or should I just forget preview for pdf files & get acrobat reader?

I sort of changed mine to Red in 10.4.11 for the same reason.
Quit Preview, paste this into Terminal window & press enter...
defaults write com.apple.Preview AppleHighlightColor "1.0 0.0 0.0"
The values are R G B in 0 to 1 scale.
Start Preview, now do a search, press Tab, the search will show in Red Highlight, but not in the PDF it's self.
Adobe Reader will highlight within the PDF in a better color.
On searching through PDFs, might see...
http://www.smileonmymac.com/PDFpen/
I'm not on 10.5/10.6 now to see, but iirc it hasn't changed.

Changing search highlight color

When you search for a text string on a web page in Safari, the "current" instance of the string is highlighted in bright yellow, and all the other instances visible at the moment are white, and the rest of the page is lightly greyed out.
This isn't too obtrusive if you're searching for a fairly short string, but if you're searching for several lines of text (not common perhaps, but it does happen), the yellow can get sort of blinding.
At first I thought this was a system-wide issue, but have come to the conclusion that it may be more specifically Safari, as I've looked at other programs that are part of the system, and the only things that are similar are TextEdit and Adium (which is not part of the installed software that comes with the system), and both of them, the yellow fades to blue very quickly.
Thanks in advance.
Sharon

HI Sharon,
It clears the cache. Sometimes just emptying the Safari Cache from the Menu Bar doesn't do the job.. that's why I suggested just removing the "cache.db" file instead. Relaunching Safari will regenerate that file.
Try moving the Safari.plist file to the Desktop if deleting the "cache.db" file doesn't help...
Go to the Safari Menu Bar, click Safari/Preferences. Make note of all the preferences under each tab. Quit Safari. Now go to ~/Library/Preferences and move this file com.apple.safari.plist to the Desktop.
Relaunch Safari and see if that makes a difference. If not, move the .plist file back to the Preferences folder. If Safari functions as it should, move that .plist file to the Trash.

Changing the Preview highlight color

When you search a PDF file with Preview, you get a list of results in the drawer. Selecting a result goes to that page and highlights the search text. However, the highlight color is a dull gray and is often very difficult to locate quickly, especially on a page full of small text.
Does anyone know if this color can be changed, for example to imitate the easily visible color used by the Firefox find command? There's no obvious preference for this, but perhaps there's something hidden in the preference file?

Preview follows the system default, which sets the highlight color of inactive windows to gray and the active window to the color set in Appearance.
When you search, you can use Tab/ShiftTab to toggle focus between the drawer (containing the search instances) and the main page display pane.

How to change highlight color in Preview quickly?

I do a lot of reading and annotating of PDFs using Preview. While I love just about everything about this program, my only complaint (if it could be called that) is that I can't figure out a quick way to cycle through the highlight colors without using the palette drop-down. Has anyone figured out a clever way to hotkey the colors for the highlighting annotation tool?

yorkait wrote:
You simply create new keyboard shortcuts for the Preview application (in system preferences). And set the shortcuts to "Red", "Yellow", and so on. This works because the contextual menu with the color is labelled this way. I binded all colors on Shift + Command + *letters from the first left hand side rows of keys*. Very handy.
(Now if someone figured out how to customize the default colors I would be eternally grateful.)
Great thanks, I didn't realize you could do that for those kind of menus as well until about a month ago when David Sparks showed doing that for Mail accounts. I have been using the assignable key commands since they added that in Tiger. I ended up doing something so much more complicated using Keymon and Size up to move the mouse and position the document on screen.
Thanks again I will add this and use this all the time!

Is there anyway to change/add more highlighter colors in Preview? I need more colors aside from those already provided in the app.

I'm a law student and I use the preview app extensively for reading cases. I need more highlighter colors aside from those already provided and it seems that there's no possible way of adding/changing the colors.

Unlike Preview, the Adobe Reader application allows you to change PDF highlight (comment) text colors via a standard Apple color chooser. Click Tools on the Reader Toolbar, and then Comment. The second button in the Comment Annotation section is highlight text, and defaults to canary yellow.
Highlight the document text, and then two-finger tap/control-right-click that highlighted text. On the contextual menu, you will see Properties…. The properties panel has a color well set to yellow. Click this color well, and a standard Apple color chooser will appear that allows you more creative control over your highlight color. When you click a color in the color chooser, it is not automatically updated in the color well, which remains dark grey. When you quit the color chooser, the selected color is updated in this color well and in your document. The next text that you select to highlight will receive a default yellow highlight.

How do I change the highlight color?

When I'm working on my document in Pages, I often do a Search (command-F) to quickly find a word or phrase that appears somewhere else in the document. It works great, but it highlights the word/phrase in light gray, which I have trouble seeing. Is there a way to change the highlight color to yellow, or any other color, making the word/phrase easier to see?

You can find it under the Pages menu > Provide Pages Feedback. That takes you to the same page as this link.

Hotmail tools missing highlight color tool IE & Apple same Hotmail a/c is ok

IE9 terrible, so as many advise I changed to Firefox & true in SRV is great, but when I access Hotmail live my account via IE 8 or 9 or Apple Safari browser, the email compose site has the last tool after text color as a highlight color button.
I use this a lot in mail or extract pasted forwarding to others. Then I can select the highlight tool and type normal black text on yellow background, viewers know my work always yellow highlighted, other text are the originator of the pasted text.
How can I restore that tool to Firefox operated hotmail live toolbar normal mposition as last tool on that standard format list.

Hi there,
I have this exact same issue with my Mac Mini home media server. It has a fixed IP. However there is no vpn client installed.
When I restart the computer everything works fine. Then after a couple of days the dns loses it. Dig works fine and ping. If I try google in a browser it won't load, but if I put in an IP address of a known existing website, it works fine. I can still use remote desktop to access the computer. But if I try to access iTunes through the Remote iPhone app it fails to connect.
I have searched a lot on the internet, and tried out a lot of solutions / suggestions but the bug is rather persistent.
Is there anyone who can help me with this one?
Regards,
Jasper

Find feature Highlight Color and End of document alert

I am using Version 2.0.7 and noticed two problems with the text find feature that I hope someone else knows about a configuration setting or work around that will resolve the problems.
Thanks,
Problem 1. Found search characters are highlighted in gray. This color is difficult to spot if not looking straight at the screen or if only a few characters are in the search. Is there a preference setting that can change the color of found text searches?
Problem 2. When reaching the end of the email, there is no alert message to ask if the find function should search backwards. Clicking on the find Next button causes the process automatically loop back to the top and begin again.
Is this a bug or the way the function works?

Thank you for responding to my query.
I performed the following additional analysis and confirmed the behaviors still exists. Please let me know these conditions can be duplicated.
Problem 1 - highlight text color
A. Checked preference settings as recommended and confirmed Highlight Color is "Gold".
B. Opened mail message, selected Edit>Find and typed in the search characters.
C. Clicked on the next button in the Find window.
D. Results is that the found text highlight color was "Grey" in the email message. What would be expected is the found text color to be "Gold".
Problem 2 - End of message foud text alert.
I read the initial description and found that this problem was misstated. So I am offering the following script to illustrate it:
A. In the find box select a word or combination of characters that does exist in the message.
B. Click on find button.
C. Listen for the audio alert advising there was no match.
D. Change the Find Box selection to a word or group of characters that occcurs multiple times in the message.
E. Click on the Next button in the Find text window.
F. Note that the find process stops at each occurence of the search characters. (as stated in problem 1 the highlight color is "Grey')
G. Keep on clicking the Find button. The result is that there is no end of message alert. Unlike the alert in step C, the find process automatically loops back to the first match and continues as long as the Next button is clicked. What would be expected is an end of search alert for both unfound and found conditions.
Regards,
Mac OS X (10.4.6)

ICal highlight color too dim

I can barely see the pale color of the iCal cell for the date. I remember this being a problem for a long time with iCal. You can't see the highlight color in the day cell. I have the same problem with the search or find. The highlight color is so pale it is hard to find in a page of text.
I vaguely remember there was a way to darken that color in terminal, but I don't remember any details.
Can someone help fix this. This is a bug that Apple seems to ignore year after year.
Thanks

I have a similar problem with iCal, and always have. It uses light grey on a white background for days and hours. Can't see the days well, but especially the hours, can't discriminate those at all. Am not sure why more people haven't complained, or why this hasn't been fixed before this.
Maybe it doesn't show up on iMac's which have their own monitors built in. I use a MacMini, with a Samsung monitor. Have played with the Samsung monitor's settings, but can't fix the problem that way either.
Did check my Contrast setting in System Prefs, and it's Normal, and all the way to the left.
I think Apple needs to fix this. I'm not sure there's anything the end user can do.

Highlight color when using Find 2

Hello
I have the same problem as mumbles (in http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2257163&#2257163): When I do Find in Safari and look for a word, it highlights the search term in a very light blue that I can barely see. — Just that I don't want to have the highlight color set to, say, strong red systemwide, since this is useful with the find command on a web page, but bothersome in all other cases. Is there a way to change this in Safari only? (I'm afraid there isn't, for it seems tied to the system, but maybe I'm as wrong here as I often am … )
thanks a lot
N.
Titanium PowerBook G4 / 1,67 MHz Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Hi Nikolai
I know what you mean - one tip is instead of clicking the next button from the Find box, press enter on your keyboard. For me , this highlights the word rather more visibly & you can use the shortcut Command G ( Apple key + G ) to search for the next instance.
I have the system highlight colour set to a muted Orange & the overall appearance set to Blue & find this to be an excellent compromise - although clicking the Next button still gives a highlight in some impossible-to-see grey/blue.
Is there a way to change this in Safari only
Not so far as I know - sorry.
iMac G5 rev B (OSX 10.4.7) 2GB 250GB

Highlight color

I have an odd problem with highlighting text in safari.
When I type in a search in Google and I am presented with a list of finds when I move down the list the highlight color does not exist and actually it is clear.
At first I thought it was the highlight color in preferences but I changed it to orange with the same result.
Is there some setting in Safari or some other system preference that needs adjusting.
BF

As far as I can tell, the sytem highlight color has nothing to do with the highlighting being asked about, which is more like the highlighting in a menu selection.
Some traditional questions:
Does this behavior survive a restart?
Are there any plugins/extensions in Safari you have installed?
Does this behavior persist for a different user, e.g., Guest?
Does this behavior persist in Safe Mode?
charlie

Highlight color during find in pages

This has been bugging me for a long time. How can I change the highlight color when I do a find in pages? It is really hard for me to see what is highlighted. I need it to jump out at me more than the very subtle highlight that I currently see. I have this problem with other mac apps sometimes, but have the worst problem with pages. I searched through the forums, my apologies if this is already answered. Any help would be deeply appreciated.

When you use the Find dialog that window remains the active one so that the highlight in the document, which is not the active window, appears gray. If you switch to the document window, the highlight color should then appear as the color you have set in System Preferences > Appearance.
If you're wanting to find successive instances of something, switch back to the document window & use ⌘ G to move to the next instance.

Preview Searching Bug

Anyone else noticed that Preview search is broken?
I just loaded a PDF file and searched for a friend's name (it's an old computer club newsletter). It found the instances of his name, and hitting command-g would cycle through them.
I then searched for another term and Previous found the first occurrence.
However, when I hit command-g to cycle through them, it went back to finding instances of the first search instead of what I was currently looking for, while displaying the new term in the search entry.
In fact, I was not able to get Preview to search for other words in that document without closing it and opening the file again.
Seems to happen on other files as well.
I'm going to file a bug report, but I'm curious if anyone else has noticed this.

Same sort of weirdness -- not sure if its the same bug -- here.
Yes, the Preview search capabilities certainly look busted in 10.5.1.
When this crops up, the only way I can search through all the hits shown is by selecting each individually with the pointer. And they don't highlight in the sidebar. With the sidebar selected, I can't successfully select the next match in the sidebar. It loops within the section, and nothing shown in the main window gets highlighted in the sidebar. (This is severely weird search navigation, yes.)
If I quit Preview and relaunch when I get stuck in this particular morass, it appears to clear the problem. At least, I just tried that and it seemed to clear it.
Also when this case cropped up, I noticed these over in the console window:
12/21/07 11:33:58 AM Preview{880} NSMapInsert: map table argument is NULL
Is there a bug number I can reference when I log this? I'm not sure if I'm seeing the same bug, or a cousin here, since I'm currently using the same search string for several searches.

Preview Search Highlight Color

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