I’ve added a plugin so that Private Messages appear like shaded chat bubbles. This display is merely cosmetic - PMs are still the same, but it does make it a bit easier to distinguish whether you’re posting publicly or privately to a person or a group.
It’s easily reversible if nobody likes this.
Huh. Interesting. It definitely makes it less confusing. I’ve fallen into the trap of not realizing I was posting to a PM instead of a thread before, so this should help avoid that in the future.
I do kind of wish the theme was slightly different. It’s just a bit jarring against the dark theme, but I’m assuming it’s a “one size fits all” kind of thing?
I can adjust the colors in the main plugin, I’ll have to check if they’re adjustable per theme…
Yeah…if it’s text color that’s a problem I can specify the plugin to use a different color slot for the text as long as it’s one in the set color scheme for the theme, but text appears readable in the Dark theme.
The bubble color is is modifiable, but that choice is fixed across themes. Worst case scenario, I can disable bubble text completely in specific themes. Green and blue might be too happy when people are in “Dark Theme” mood…
Don’t stress yourself about it. It’s not that big a deal. 
I saw that blue bubble version for a second though. Please don’t use that one because it makes links really hard to read.
I adjusted the color opacity to 5%, which appears closer to white in the Dark theme, is this any better? Or is the point to avoid brightness altogether?
I was hoping to avoid brightness. But since you can’t alter the text color, the original setting was probably the best.
I like it. I never misposted a PM as a public post or vice versa, but this might save me some checking and doublechecking.
In the Dark Theme, quoted text within the bubble has a dark background and black text on it has very low contrast. Is it possible to go with white text or a lighter background for quoted text?
Thanks for doing this – something I’ve disliked about Discourse is feeling a need to double-check whether I’m sending a reply or a direct message. Any chance the interface can be made distinct when you’re creating a new direct message as well?
I’m looking into it. I have to figure out how the theme color schemes interact with the plugin. Worst case scenario, you can highlight the dark-on-dark text to make it readable.
The flag/link/etc buttons are almost invisible:
I like the idea of the chat bubble borders, to make it really clear that it’s a PM, but maybe we could have it without background colours?
How’s this?
The only place white doesn’t work is in the “Alien Night” theme when toggled to dark, but the point of that theme is it has a quick UI switch from dark to light mode, and I would guess anyone using that theme wants it specifically for that switchability.
Maybe we could post a suggestion to the Discourse forum for this asking for an option just to have the borders, but to leave the posts and text colours unchanged?
Or maybe we can just find some other colours that work better. The examples here look good: Personal Message Bubbles - #56 by ggurbet - theme - Discourse Meta