How do I change the register font color back to all black. Q Mac Ver 6.1.1 turned deposits green.

Question

Scrolling through a multi-color register is distracting and not at all helpful. I just updated Quicken Deluxe to version 6.1.1 and running MacOS 11.1. I cannot find anything in Quicken Preferences or on the help/community topics. Thanks.

mcdragon · Answer

@jacobs Thank you. I updated from 6.0 to 6.1 but after your response I thought well it must have been a much darker green. Changing the Big Sur accent color had no effect. After a bit more consideration & experimentation, I realized it's a classic color optics issue. My color perception sees brighter greens when near the new neon green separation bar or that bar was recently in my sight. If that bar is off screen for a few seconds and, especially in part of the register with fewer deposits, the amounts appear much darker.

I like that the separation bar is now visible when selecting adjacent transactions, so I'll adapt, or change some more varied transaction registers to your suggested Payment & Deposit columns. I prefer the Amount column as well, but the other view has some merit depending on the register contents. Thanks.

jacobs · Answer

When you said you "just upgraded to Quicken Mac 6.1.1", are you referring to migrating from the venerable Quicken 2007? Because the modern Quicken Mac has always, since its inception in 2014, shown deposits in green. As best I can tell, nothing has changed in 6.1.1 or anytime recently.

As to the broader question of register color: no there are no user controls over the color of transaction amounts (or any other colors in Quicken Mac, for that matter). Some users think deposits should be black. Some users want negative numbers to be red (like Quicken 2007), not black with minus signs. (I find it inconsistent that negative transaction amounts are black, while negative balances are red.) For now at least, we are stuck, for better or worse, with the developers' choices for colors. I could envision this type of preference might emerge somewhere in the future when they've built more of the credit functionality and circle back to aesthetic and usability enhancements.

Meanwhile, I have an alternative to suggest which you might find desirable: instead of using the Amount column, which shows positive numbers in green and negative numbers in black, try switching to using two separate money in/out columns  (e.g. Payment and Deposit in a checking account). Click on Columns in the register's bottom toolbar, uncheck Amount, and check Payment and Deposit. (These columns have different names depending on the type of account; in a checking account, they are Charge and Payment; in a cash account, they are Spend and Receive.) By showing two columns for money in and out, you get a visual separation of your deposits and spending which is not based on color -- and all the values are in black and unsigned.

I personally prefer this view of my registers to the single Amount column.