Since it would probably take some time for this minor feature to be implemented, I decided to update the Firefox addon BW color scheme myself. It wasn’t too difficult to accomplish. I’ve given instructions below. I’m not going to send you my altered addon.
WARNING: I’m very confident the developers don’t want people doing this, but it is a very minimal addon change. If you screw up your computer, neither I nor BW are responsible. Proceed at your own risk.
If something goes wrong, you can simply Remove the addon and reinstall the official addon from the BW site.
If you update the addon in the future, it may wipe out any changes you make, so either you would have to change the colors again, or you could turn off the update feature. That of course could open you up to a security flaw that an update is meant to correct. I’ve left my auto-update setting turned on, and I’ll see what happens when the addon updates. Its a 5 minute fix to change the icons again after an update once you figure out how to do it.
I recommend making a copy of the original BW xpi file before you proceed, then make another copy to be your working copy as the one you have install in your browser is eventually going to be overwritten.
I knew which xpi was the BW addon since I only installed it a week ago. But if you have the latest version as of 2021.03.07, the name of the addon should be {446900e4-71c2-419f-a6a7-df9c091e268b}.
This is the location on Windows 10 for the Firefox addons:
C:\Users[your computer username]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles[your Firefox profile name]\extensions
I use 7z for zipping files, which is fine, just choose .zip when the time comes as I found some evidence online that .7z will cause issues since its a different compression alg. Or use winzip or some free online zip app. I’m not sure if Windows has a native zip function.
The XPI addon file is a zip file, so you rename it to .zip and unpack it. Then there is an Images folder inside with half a dozen BLUE icons. There are gray ones as well, but those aren’t used for the main browser icon. There is a BLUE icon with a red lock that I ignored since that was never going to be used for the main browser icon. I wasn’t sure which icon the main browser icon was, so I changed all the BLUE ones. They aren’t used anywhere else besides the main browser window as far as I can tell.
I copied the BLUE icons to a new folder to make it easier to change just those icons. I will eventually replace the originals after the color change. I used an online site to easily adjust the color of each icon, and I turned down the contract of the white in the center of the icon with the blue surrounding it as that made the BLUE look brighter. I turned the contrast down to -5. Pick what you like. I chose a lighter teal-ish blue color for the icon color change. You have to drag and drop each .png icon file in turn into the online app, but the settings you select stay the same and then you download each changed icon to your downloads folder for example. They should retain the same names.
I then replaced just the old BLUE .png icon files in the Images folder with my new less bright icon set. If you created a new folder within the addon files folder, delete it or it will be part of the addon and likely cause a corrupt file error due to size change.
** This is an important part **
In order to rezip the addon, you have to highlight the contents of the unzipped folder (not the containing folder that is created by the unzip. After you rezip the contents, you change the .zip extension to .XPI. Double click the xpi and the addon will install in Firefox as normal.
If you get a Corrupt addon message, you didn’t follow the directions. Either figure it out or revert back to the original addon.
I now have a much nicer teal blue icon for the BW addon in my browser. Its much less obvious and doesn’t distract me while browsing. Took longer to write this explanation than to change the icon color.