Eclipse, change popup text background color when hovering the mouse on a keyword

Update Dec. 2018: as mentioned in howlger's answer, Eclipse Oxygen 4.7 (June 2017) does now include a way to configure the background color in popups:

See "Colors in interactive popups"

Interactive popups like JDT's Quick Outline don't use the platform's tooltip colors any more, since those were sometimes hard to read.

Old style:

New style:

• Go to Window > Preferences: General > Appearance > Colors and Fonts
• and change the Basic > Information background color.

In that same Colors and Fonts section, you will find:

• Code assist

  • Basic > Content Assist background color -> change
  • Basic > Content Assist foreground color -> change

• java doc

  • Java > Javadoc background ( overrides default: information background color) -> change

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Original answer (2010-2012)

All the various popup background color are managed in Preferences > Java > Editor (like the one for the completion list popup in bug 133615).
Other background colors are in General > Appearance > Colors and Font (type background in the filter field).

But the type popup seems to stick to a system color, which is why you see a black background.
If this is truly the case, it is worth reporting as a bug.

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The OP confirms it is not the case, actually:

It was in Preferences > C/C++ > Editor > Source hover background, and had to untick the "System default" (because the shown color was light-gray!)

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On Ubuntu 12.04+, the post "How to change tooltip background color in Unity?" also mentions:

/usr/share/themes/Ambiance/gtk-2.0/gtkrc

The recent post (December 2012) "Eclipse Papercut #10 – Eclipse on Ubuntu: Fixing the black background color in hover" (from Lars Vogel) confirms:

The relevant properties are tooltip_fg_color and tooltip_bg_color.
Just search for these values, the position changes sometimes between releases, currently they are at the very top of the file.

The following setting uses more reasonable colors.

tooltip_fg_color:#000000
tooltip_bg_color:#f5f5c5

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pointhi adds in the comments:

I also had to set the environment variable SWT_GTK3=0 before starting eclipse to get it working.

If you use KDE (Kubuntu) you can fix that by changing the Tooltip Background color in KDE System Settings -> Application Appearance -> Colors -> Colors, and change the Tooltip Background.

I've adopted a slightly different solution;

First create a new script, eclipse.sh, that starts eclipse, mine look like this:

#!/bin/bash
GTK2_RC_FILES=/usr/share/eclipse/gtkrc-2.0-eclipse /usr/share/eclipse/eclipse

Then create the gtkrc file (/usr/share/eclipse/gtkrc-2.0-eclipse), mine look like this (it have some other changes as well to make better use of the screen):

style "my-tooltips"
{
  bg[NORMAL] = "#FFFFAF"
  fg[NORMAL] = "#000000"
}
widget "gtk-tooltip*" style "my-tooltips"

style "gtkcompact" 
{
    font_name="Ubuntu Light 11"

    GtkButton::default_border={0,0,0,0}
    GtkButton::default_outside_border={0,0,0,0}
    GtkButtonBox::child_min_width=0
    GtkButtonBox::child_min_heigth=0
    GtkButtonBox::child_internal_pad_x=4
    GtkButtonBox::child_internal_pad_y=4
    GtkMenu::vertical-padding=1
    GtkMenuBar::internal_padding=0
    GtkMenuItem::horizontal_padding=4
    GtkToolbar::internal-padding=1
    GtkToolbar::space-size=1
    GtkOptionMenu::indicator_size=0
    GtkOptionMenu::indicator_spacing=0
    GtkPaned::handle_size=4
    GtkRange::trough_border=0
    GtkRange::stepper_spacing=0
    GtkScale::value_spacing=0
    GtkScrolledWindow::scrollbar_spacing=0
    GtkExpander::expander_size=10
    GtkExpander::expander_spacing=0
    GtkTreeView::vertical-separator=0
    GtkTreeView::horizontal-separator=0
    GtkTreeView::expander-size=10
    GtkTreeView::fixed-height-mode=TRUE
    GtkWidget::focus_padding=0
    GtkTreeView::vertical-separator = 0
}

class "GtkWidget" style "gtkcompact"

style "gtkcompactextra" 
{
    xthickness=0
    ythickness=0
}

class "GtkButton"   style "gtkcompactextra"
class "GtkToolbar"  style "gtkcompactextra"
class "GtkPaned"    style "gtkcompactextra"
class "GtkNotebook" style "gtkcompact"