**System details:** 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700K, AMD Radeon RX 7900 (Navi 31), Hyprland 0.56.2, Omarchy 4.0.4-1

With the bar transparent, `omarchy-bar-text-color` reduces the wallpaper behind the bar to one pixel and prints whichever of the theme text color and the theme background has the higher contrast against that average. `shell/plugins/bar/Bar.qml` passes those two colors: `themeForeground` is `Color.bar.text` (line 74) and `themeContrastForeground` is `Color.background` (line 75).

On a saturated mid-blue sky that choice paints the bar in the theme background, and the type falls below 4.5:1. The dark candidate is a surface color, so a theme that deliberately stays off pure black has no ink dark enough for this wallpaper. Splitting the sample into left, center, and right, as proposed in #8615, still selects the same color on a sky that is blue across the left and center.

### What happened

Liftoff's launch wallpaper (`backgrounds/01-liftoff.png`) has an open blue sky across the top and clouds toward the right. Theme colors are background `#151E26` and foreground `#ECE5D8`. The bar height used by the theme is 26.

```
omarchy-bar-text-color top 26 '#ECE5D8' '#151E26'
#151E26
```

The same command prints `#151E26` at bar heights 39 and 52. The average of that top strip is about `#3F87B8`. Charcoal beats cream against the average, about 4.3:1 against 3.1:1, so every label and icon is painted `#151E26`.

Against the sky the glyphs actually sit on:

| Behind the glyphs | Wallpaper | `#151E26` | `#ECE5D8` |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Clock | `#1D73AC` | 3.29:1 | 4.09:1 |
| Open blue, left side | `#097BBA` | 3.66:1 | 3.68:1 |
| Pale cloud, right side | `#7BA4C2` | 6.37:1 | 2.11:1 |

The clock is small text. 4.5:1 is the WCAG AA floor for normal text, and `#151E26` on `#1D73AC` is 3.29:1. `#151E26` is a blue charcoal, the same hue as the sky, so the shortfall reads as a soft edge. The right-hand icons clear about 6:1 only because they land on the cloud. Cream would wash out on that cloud.

Pure black on the clock sky is about 4.1:1. No swap between the two theme colors clears both the saturated blue and the white vapour.

<img width="3840" height="54" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/f6961982-2189-4e65-861f-a696aa5101eb" />
<img width="440" height="54" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/253f630c-ed8f-4e92-b277-3eff4b5c8719" />

### Expected

Small text on a transparent bar should stay at 4.5:1 or better against the wallpaper behind it. Picking the theme background from one average does not do that when the wallpaper is a bright photograph and the background color was mixed as a surface rather than as ink.

### Steps

1. Apply a dark theme whose background is a lifted charcoal and whose foreground is a light cream. Liftoff uses `#151E26` and `#ECE5D8`.
2. Set a wallpaper whose top band is saturated mid-blue rather than white or near-black. Liftoff's `01-liftoff.png` is one.
3. Run `omarchy bar transparent true`.
4. Run `omarchy-bar-text-color top 26 '#ECE5D8' '#151E26'` and confirm it prints `#151E26`.
5. Compare that color with the sky directly behind the clock.