What is zotero-glass?

Zotero Glass is a plugin that gives the Zotero reference manager a real glass, frosted appearance on Mac computers. Zotero is popular software researchers use to organize academic papers and citations, and this plugin makes its windows look like they are made of translucent, blurred glass, matching the native look of other Mac apps. What makes this different from a typical theme is that it does not fake the glass look with CSS colors and transparency tricks. Instead it reaches into Apple's own AppKit system and uses a real native component called NSVisualEffectView, the same technology behind the frosted panels seen throughout macOS itself. The plugin applies this consistent glass material across Zotero's main library window, its PDF reader sidebar, annotation popups, and its settings page, all controlled through in-app settings you can adjust immediately without editing any code. The plugin only works on macOS, since it depends directly on AppKit, and it currently only supports Zotero's dark theme. When you enable it, it automatically switches Zotero into dark mode, because all of its visual settings, text contrast, and layering were designed around a dark background. It does not support Windows, Linux, or Zotero's light theme yet. Importantly, the plugin does not touch or rewrite your actual research data. It does not modify your papers, tags, PDFs, database, or column layouts, it only manages its own settings and the visual appearance of Zotero's windows. Disabling it removes all injected styles and native views and restores your previous theme. Installation is done by downloading a ready-made XPI file from the releases page and installing it through Zotero's plugin manager, or by building it from source with an included build script. The project ships with an automated test suite that runs on every code push.