Help. Textedit doing my head in. Incomprehensible behavior

[BingClawsby]

I just got a new mac with sequoia 15.7. Coming from a late 2012 mini, high sierra.

This new OSX is incomprehensible the things it does or rather doesn't do. Thing I'm about to chew through a steel bar is with textedit.
It's default is black background/white text. Don't like that so I change to white/black. Rich Text mode.
I'm typing away, looks that way on screen. I go to print it out....blank page. Printer preview shows pages as blank too.

I do change background/text color a thousand times to make sure. Still prints blank. I do notice however that the icon on my desktop for the file shows as black background color, even though I've been saving all along white bkgnd/black text.

So I bring the file over to my 2012 mini. It opens as black bkgnd/white text. In 123, I change the colors. NOW it'll print. I also saved the text file as PDF.

I take both back over to the new mac. That text file has reverted to want to print blank, even though it shows on screen as white bkgnd/ black text. Plus, it's icon shows same as the original... black/white.
However, the pdf I made DOES show properly and will print.

Never had anything like this with textedit previously. Only thing I'd futz with is text size. Everything just worked as expected

This is doing my head in. WTF is going on here??? I could finish what I'm doing on the new mac, then bring it to the mini, PROPERLY reverse background and text and print from there, or, make it a pdf and print from new mac. But that's a kludge.
How do I get textedit to work on new machine?

 

[theluggage]

It's default is black background/white text. Don't like that so I change to white/black. Rich Text mode.

Have you somehow got MacOS set to "Dark Mode"?

System Settings -> Appearance -> Light/Dark/Auto?

In "dark" mode, TextEdit will invert the display so it displays as white text on a black background, but this will print as black text on white. I've tried changing text FG/background colours in that mode and, yeah, it's confusing because even the colour picker swaps black and white. Stick to 'light mode' if you want "What you see is what you get"!

 

[Fishrrman]

As luggage mentions, are you using "Dark Mode"?

I can't understand why anyone likes it -- I find text VERY difficult to read when light/dark is reversed.

Go to system settings -> appearance and try "light" mode.
Do things get better?

 

[theluggage]

I can't understand why anyone likes it -- I find text VERY difficult to read when light/dark is reversed.

Eh, when I were a lad, everything were "dark mode" and we liked it, better still when it were green or orange on black. If we wanted to know what it was going to look like on white paper we ruddy well walked all the way to the printer an' back to find out an' we was grateful. Then this new fangled Macintosh thing came along with black text on white like it were some sort of electricky paper an' everybody went soft. Ruddy waste of electrons, lighting up all that screen if you ask me... Now the trendy kids suddenly want 'dark mode' again, but if you ask 'em to patch WordStar with the escape codes to make the MX-80 print italics they don't 'ave a clue.

 

[BigBlur]

As luggage mentions, are you using "Dark Mode"?

I can't understand why anyone likes it -- I find text VERY difficult to read when light/dark is reversed.

Go to system settings -> appearance and try "light" mode.
Do things get better?

Or in TextEdit, just go to the View menu and uncheck "Use Dark Background for Windows". No need to turn off dark mode altogether.

 

[BingClawsby]

Have you somehow got MacOS set to "Dark Mode"?

System Settings -> Appearance -> Light/Dark/Auto?

In "dark" mode, TextEdit will invert the display so it displays as white text on a black background, but this will print as black text on white. I've tried changing text FG/background colours in that mode and, yeah, it's confusing because even the colour picker swaps black and white. Stick to 'light mode' if you want "What you see is what you get"!

Thank you Thank you Thank you !!! 👍👍👍

That was it. Dark Mode was the default setting though. Was going insane yesterday as to why Textedit wasn't behaving as I always expected since my 7600 power mac.

 

[BingClawsby]

As luggage mentions, are you using "Dark Mode"?

I can't understand why anyone likes it -- I find text VERY difficult to read when light/dark is reversed.

Go to system settings -> appearance and try "light" mode.
Do things get better?

Yes that did it, thanks!

Me too, don't like white text/black background either

 

[BingClawsby]

Or in TextEdit, just go to the View menu and uncheck "Use Dark Background for Windows". No need to turn off dark mode altogether.

Thank you too for that! Works as well. 👍