Bug in Rider's Visual Studio Dark color scheme

Created July 14, 2025 18:13

Rider's built-in Visual Studio Dark color scheme has a console output rendering issue that makes text difficult or impossible to read, particularly when using Serilog logging.

Regular console text appears in black, making it unreadable against the dark background Log level indicators (such as "WARN", "INFO", etc.) display with white backgrounds, creating poor contrast and readability issues.

I have isolated the issue and created a custom color scheme that inherits all settings from the existing “Visual Studio Dark” scheme, correcting only the two problematic console output attributes. This ensures proper text visibility while maintaining the familiar dark theme appearance.

I have found a few posts elsewhere that suggest turning certain screen reader accessibility features off. While that seemed to work for some, those settings were already off and were not contributing to the issue I was seeing personally.

You can review the scheme file and changes in my github gist here:
https://gist.github.com/blackf0rk/14f33d45579cc4debccd5e6e09d004c0

For brevity, these are the two main attributes that require updating:

<option name="CONSOLE_BLACK_OUTPUT">
  <value>
    <!-- In the original scheme, this value is incorrectly set to 'ffffff' -->
    <option name="FOREGROUND" value="0" />
  </value>
</option>
    
<option name="CONSOLE_WHITE_OUTPUT">
  <value>
    <!-- In the original scheme, this value is incorrectly set to '0' -->
    <option name="FOREGROUND" value="f0f0f0" />
  </value>
</option>

3 comments

Tom Luo

Created July 21, 2025 08:20

Hello Jourdan,

Thank you for reporting this issue and sharing the great workaround you've found. I believe it will help others facing the similiar issues.

After investigating, I found that this behavior is primarily related to the Serilog sink’s default color scheme, which sets text to black. This can cause visibility issues on consoles with a black background, regardless of the host environment (including Rider).

In addition to your workaround, another option is to customize Serilog color scheme, like below:

    using var log = new LoggerConfiguration()
        .WriteTo.Console(theme: ConsoleTheme.None)
        .CreateLogger();

See Serilog themes for more details.

At this point, I wouldn’t classify this as a bug in Rider’s Visual Studio Dark theme, since it stems from Serilog’s defaults. However, if you encounter similar visibility issues in regular console output (non-Serilog), please let me know—I’d be happy to investigate further.

Thanks again for your contribution!

Thanks,

Tom

Jourdan Laik

Created July 21, 2025 16:15

Thanks Tom Luo ,

I just wanted to share an observation that might help narrow things down. When switching to any of the other dark color schemes in Rider (including those from third-party themes), the logging colors display correctly. It looks like the issue may be specific to the Visual Studio color scheme.

Also, while I understand workarounds are sometimes necessary, I wonder if adding IDE-specific code to the project might introduce confusion for others, especially if they’re using a different development environment. Ideally, we can find a solution that maintains cleanliness and consistency for everyone.

Tom Luo

Created August 04, 2025 16:43

Hello Jourdan,

Sorry that I couldn't reply to you earlier. I appreciate the additional details you provided. You're right that the issue doesn't occur on other dark color schemes, which indicates this should indeed be a bug. For better tracking, I have created a bug report in our issue tracker: RIDER-128448 Poor Visibility of Dark Text in Console Output for Visual Studio Dark theme

Thank you again for bringing this to our attention and for sharing such valuable insights. Your feedback helps us improve Rider for everyone. Wishing you a great day ahead!

Thanks,

Tom

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