Open Radar

 
Summary:
On Sierra and earlier, NSColor’s alternateSelectedControlColor was based on the highlight colour set in System Preferences > General. It was a darkened version of the selectedControlColor.

On High Sierra, alternateSelectedControlColor is always blue. I think it looks garish.

That setting in System Preferences is still used for selectedControlColor  (which I’m not sure is actually used for any AppKit-provided controls anymore) and for text selection.

This can seen seen across the system, such as the selected file in Finder, the Mail message list, the Bookmarks list in Safari, the list in Contacts, all kinds of lists in System Preferences.

You can observe this colour and other system colours in the color panel or in Interface Builder in Xcode with any item that has a colour property.

If this was a design decision, I think it was a bad one. This blue may well clash with the user set highlight colour (still used for text selection). It should at least be a more neutral grey if using the Graphite appearance rather than Blue.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Set a distinct highlight colour in System Preferences > General, such as bright pink
2. Open Mail and select a message in the list

Expected Results:
Selected item in list should be a darkened version of selectedControlColor as it was in Sierra and earlier.

Actual Results:
Selected item in list is blue.

Version:
10.13 Beta (17A315i)

Notes: