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The problem. In thunar in xubuntu 24.04, the selected file name becomes impossible to read when the thunar window goes into the background (is no longer the front most window). You see the following:

xubuntu thunar in background, showing a highlighted file in which the text is no longer readable

Adjusting the text selection and background appearance settings for thunar are not available via Settings Manager | Settings Editor. Luckily, thunar can easily be customized another way via css.

The solution. To fix this unreadable text when thunar is in the background, add a file called gtk.css to ~/.config/gtk-3.0 with the following text (it is highly likely that this file does not yet exist, so you will need to create it with a text editor like emacs:

.thunar .view { background-color: #ffffff; }
.thunar .view:selected { background-color: pink; color: green; }

The #ffffff color is for a white display background for the window (the default in thunar). The pink color is for the text selection color, and the green color is for the selected text. The resulting thunar window when in the background now appears as:

thunar in xubuntu now showing readable text when the window is in the background

Problem solved.

Note: To learn how to compile software (and get a useful emacs clone along the way for editing text within a terminal window), try your hand at kg — “kg is a small, fast terminal text editor with pure Emacs keybindings. Suitable for editing system files or quick fixes on remote systems where a full GUI editor is not available.”

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