Factorio Forums

The item property "dark_background_icon" (as used in the data\base\prototypes\item\demo-item.lua entry for coal) is very nice for improving visibility when an item whose image is very dark is in a chest or being carried by a logistic bot, but it should also apply for the recipe shown over assembling machines; alas it currently does not.

The inconsistency can be illustrated as follows:
All three icons shown are for the base game coal. The chest and bot show the dark_background_icon nicely, but the assembling machine, sadly, does not, thus the visibility for what particular recipe the assembler is producing is rather poor. Naturally, this issue does not present itself in vanilla, where there are no recipes to produce coal, but the issue is manifest in mods that do have recipes for coal and/or other items that use the dark_background_icon property.

The assembling machine will be using the icon specified by a recipe, not an item. it's possible that the dark icon property isn't being automatically transferred to the recipe, or not even supported at all.

Try setting it on the recipe you're using in the assembling machine, and see if that fixes the issue.

bobingabout wrote:The assembling machine will be using the icon specified by a recipe, not an item. it's possible that the dark icon property isn't being automatically transferred to the recipe, or not even supported at all.

Try setting it on the recipe you're using in the assembling machine, and see if that fixes the issue.

Yes, you can specify your own custom recipe icon as a workaround, but the base issue remains, that the dark icon is not auto-applied to a recipe when no custom recipe icon is specified.
Furthermore, the dark icon may not look good in the recipe list itself, so you might not want to specify it as the custom recipe icon.