@nickvergessen pointed out that there are too many shades of gray. I could remove the circle around the X button when it's not hovered so it's bee one less shade. What do you think?

As briefly mentioned in our call, I would say if we change it, then I’d expect the input field to be grey, not the block around it.

Because the current style (please always do before / after comparison screenshots :) actually looks very light and nice like @jenniferpiperek designed it, and changing to having a whole grey block down there is a bit massive. (As @nickvergessen also pointed out.)

(And then again, input fields are usually not grey but always white with a border around it, so I see a high risk in breaking that convention. On first glance it would look like a disabled button or disabled input field more than a regular input field.)

input fields are usually not grey but always white with a border around it, so I see a high risk in breaking that convention.

Pushed a second attempt with border on the input field

Looks better, and then we don't need the additional horizontal line anymore? Could either be done with a fade to white, or only showing the line when not scrolled all the way to the bottom (that's what e.g. Signal does).

Done it the signal way, looks pretty darn good to me!

Looking great now! :) The commits seem messed up though, as e.g. also the button-looking date dividers which we don’t want are in here?

Looking great now! :) The commits seem messed up though, as e.g. also the button-looking date dividers which we don’t want are in here?

Yep needs some cleanup.
This branch Is based on the date-buttons branch because of the messagelist alignment issues fixed there. We don't want them? I thought that the discussion was still open, please see the updates!
I think that they look very nice and that there's no real danger that someone would mistake them for buttons, but if you still are not convinced, let's at least merge the center alignment of the system messages and the layour fixes there.