It is silly that dark mode isn't regarded the same as just switching themes. Forcing its adoption however breaks dependency on non-themable components so its popularity is still a net benefit.

There's a difference between "we'll test and support two color schemes" and "we'll design ui with parametrised colors, shapes and text sizes which can adjust to any change and still be usable". If we settle on bright/dark/colorblind mode selectors that everyone expects to be supported, I'm happy. I've seen themes in the past and there was always a few apps which just can't resize elements in the expected way, or the backgrounds don't tile correctly, or ...

Ok, then don't support it. But don't patronise me. Don't tell me I couldn't possibly wield the power of recolouring a piece of UI without hurting myself, and deny me the chance to even try.

No one can deny you anything with FOSS. Go ahead, edit everything, just please don't complain to the developers that something broke because of that.

But libadwaita hasn't taken away the ability to try? You can still load custom themes through GTK_THEME and specific CSS through ~/.config/gtk-4.0/gtk.css.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to have any measure of control at all. It's just that I'm frustrated that we had infinitely more capable theming system already in place, and it was broken.