Recent PS update blocks <textarea>/<input> transparency + breaks button/input styling (UXP regression)

UXP
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1

Man — I’ve been developing a plugin for 1.5 years, had it all working beautifully with styled themed backgrounds, waiting on my Marketplace seller account to be verified… and a recent Photoshop update has blocked background: transparent on native form controls in UXP.

Environment: Photoshop27.9.1, macOS 15.7.7 (24G720), UXP 5.

What broke:

  • <textarea> / <input> no longer honour any transparency — background: transparent (and even low-alpha like rgba(...,0.01)) render as a solid dark block instead of showing the layer/paper behind. My notepad relied on a transparent textarea over a themed paper background — now it’s a dead dark rectangle.
  • <button> chrome is back (rounded/native look), overriding my CSS.
  • <input> fields are massively too tall (UA height injected).

What I’ve already tried (no effect):

  • -webkit-appearance: none !important / appearance: none !important
  • background: transparent !important, low-alpha backgrounds
  • transform: translateZ(0) / will-change: transform (forced layer)
  • Spectrum tokens on <sp-textarea> (--spectrum-textarea-background-color: transparent)
  • lined PNG / CSS-gradient as the textarea background (only renders in the side padding, not across the field)
  • overlay divs above / layers behind the textarea (hidden by the native control)

Only thing that works: a fully opaque background-color on the control. Anything see-through fails.

Is this a known regression, and is a fix scheduled? Or is there a way to override the regressed native background/height on inputs? Any help appreciated — this has taken an otherwise finished, Marketplace-ready plugin out of commission.

Thanks.

2

I would advise using sp- prefixed HTML elements for UI. They are even harder to style using CSS. But they follow Spectrum UI guidelines. Adobe claims that those elements will look like built-in elements. Although it might not be issue-free. But to me, it is unclear if their appearance can shift over time to keep their look as other native UI when they make adjustments. In general I would say if you use built-in elements, you give up control over your UI to Adobe.

In projects where I care about UI appearance, I rather create all components from scratch. Including checkboxes, buttons etc. So I am in control. If you want even more control you can go for webview. But it has other disadvantages.

3

Tried Sp-textarea and had the same non-transparent background affect, so maybe its a generalised issue with UI elements in PS UXP.
Form inputs are taller, checkbox spacing went off, and many more.
Thanks for the reply though.

4

This sounds like an issue that was introduced with the new DroverUXP UI that went live with version 27.9. There is a blog post about it.