About Zed modal renders with an overexposed/incorrect background under transparent or translucent themes

[Melaine-iceberg]

Reproduction steps

1. Enable a theme that uses a transparent or translucent window/background.
2. Launch Zed normally.
3. Open About Zed from the command palette.
4. Observe the background of the About Zed modal.

Current vs. Expected behavior

Current behavior: The About Zed dialog has an excessively bright/opaque background when using a translucent theme, as shown in the attached screenshot.

Expected behavior: The About Zed dialog should respect the theme's transparency and render consistently with the rest of the translucent UI.

Additional context

This appears to be related to how the About Zed modal composites its background with the application's transparent/translucent window background.

A potentially related issue is #55972, which discusses incorrect alpha handling and compositing behavior with semi-transparent UI surfaces.

However, this report is specifically about the About Zed modal, where the visual discrepancy is particularly noticeable.

Zed version and system specs

Zed: v1.15.0+stable.339.e17dc4f9d50db73a458b64dcce50ecd4878b98a3 (Zed)
OS: Windows 10.0.26300
Memory: 39.2 GiB
Architecture: x86_64
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU || NVIDIA Corporation || 610.74 r610_00

Attach Zed log file

Zed.log

Zed.log

Relevant Zed settings

settings.json

settings.json

Relevant Keymap

keymap.json

(for AI issues) Model provider details

No response

If you are using WSL on Windows, what flavor of Linux are you using?

None

[zed-community-bot]

Additional recent context for triagers

Possibly related open issues:

• Buggy behaviour with transparent/blurred colour schemes #51131 — Both issues describe incorrect background rendering of UI surfaces (info boxes / About Zed modal) when using transparent/blurred themes on Windows. Issue:51131 explicitly identifies the root cause: Zed uses background.appearance to decide how to treat background of UI surfaces, causing overexposed/opaque rendering for anything other than opaque mode. The new issue's 'excessively bright/opaque background' on a translucent theme is the same mechanism — UI surfaces not correctly compositing with the transparent window background.
  • Possible shared root cause: Zed UI surface backgrounds (modals, info boxes) incorrectly use background.appearance to determine compositing behavior, resulting in overexposed/opaque rendering when a transparent or translucent theme is active.

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_{This is an automated analysis and might be incorrect.}

[Melaine-iceberg]

There is a temporary solution. Don't close the "About Zed" window first. Then, switch the theme in the editor, and then switch it back. The rendering of the "About Zed" window will be normal then.