Hi there,
i'm using Manjaro testing (Plasma 5.17.5, Framework 5.66.0, QT 5.14.0) and two or three updates ago, the "highlighting" on the taskbar changed (for the worse in my opinion). Its not limited to Breeze, but also other breeze-like themes.
In the past, minimized windows were greyed, inactive windows simple "black" and the active window had a blue bar, like here:
https://cdn.pling.com/img/f/2/8/4/d554935b471e3152ee95e28be1ee05857839.png in this https://store.kde.org/p/1301660/ theme. (Only an example, this theme shows the same behavior as described below now)

Now, all windows are greyed as if they were minimized and the active one is highlighted blue and has the blue bar. The distinction between inactive and minimized windows is very faint.

As this spans multiple themes i am not sure what can be causing this and if this is intentional? Is it a KWIN-Thing or maybe QT? Anybody else getting this?

It might have been more useful to provide a screenshot of how it is now, as my panel definitely still looks normal.

You're probably right with that:


That's what i'm getting now, no matter which breeze-derived theme i use.
I also tried a new user in case it was some setting - no change.

That is correct, but I don't see a problem in distinguishing the inactive and the minimized one. If you have problems with this, maybe use another theme or/and a different coloring?

So it's a intended change and no error on my side - good to know ^^

i don't have a problem with it per se, i just think it is a huge step back compared to the old way. Is there some way to alter coloring that i don't know of?
Because it affects all breeze-based themes i've tried, so it's not just a change in the theme - maybe in kwin?
Unfortunately i couldn't find any discussion/commit/bugreport about this on phabricator or anywhere else when looking at VDG, Kwin or themeing/Breeze...maybe i'm looking at the wrong places?

If there was a discussion it would most likely have happened in the Plasma mailing list I would say.

Keep in mind that on every major release there are changes in the wallpaper for example. Who knows when that change was discussed or decided, could have been quite some time ago.

well, at least i learned a bit more about plasma themes now ^^
In case anybody else stumbles upon this: the reason why the other breeze-themes show the same behaviour is that they don't include a ./widgets/tasks.svg that is responsible for theming the taskbar.
I tried copying over the tasks.svg from another theme that looked good into my breeze-transparent-dark and for what i can tell that works pretty well