We should absolutely be able to set our own default colors. Similar features exist in After Effects and have for some time, and changing them to my preferences was amazing. Silly that we can't do it in Illustrator, it'd be especially helpful for motion designers such as myself who would appreciate keeping Illustrator & AE layer colors the same between apps.

Like DigitalDesignDude, I'm on a recent version (25.3.1) and I'm still seeing yellow.
Actually removing yellow would be a great start, implementing some sort of user control over the auto layer colors would be ideal.

I'm using Illustrator ver 24.3 and the Yellow layer option is still present for symbol layers and can't be changed as can be seen in the below youtube video capture of my experience.

https://youtu.be/_a6U_PoiyOs

Currently new layers are the same color as the foreground color, which makes it impossible to see the nodes and lines (see attached.) Having to always manually change the color to something that contrasts is annoying. Please allow an option to either set a default color you choose, or an option to make Illustrator choose the most contasting color it can find to the foreground color automatically.

Chris, not you alone.
Check out this script by Takataka:
https://sttk3.com/blog/tips/illustrator/reject-yellow-layer3.html

Please remove the yellow layer colour from the automatically generated layers.

When a layer is colour is set to yellow, it is very difficult to utilize drawing tools because it is difficult to see the yellow guide-cursor against a white artboard.

I have been using for my work illustrator for ten years now, and this has always bothered me. Whenever a yellow layer is added, I have to manually switch it to another colour.

Thanks!

Can you create a preference that makes every new layer use the same colour? The first thing I have to do when creating a new layer is to change the colour back to light blue (my preferred colour). I understand why a user might want different colours but I cannot see many of them with my colour vision deficiency. Thank you very much.

I like the range of layer colors from light to dark in the options, but it's annoying that I can not set 1 layer color in my preferences in AI. It sucks that everytime I draw on a layer with a black outline that the auto selected layer colors are black, dark purple, dark blue etc. It would be cool to program AI to auto select contrasting layer colors for light stroke/fill or a dark stroke/fill paths.

It has been posted but it seems it has been ignored. I suspect that it is due to the fact that majority of the ILLUSTRATOR TEAM are NOT real users and/or designers. If that offends you, face the truth of it or provide some reasoning.
Bottom line is that making new layers assigns different colors for the selected objects AND most of these colors are just useless! I have created a visual reference for the first 8 colors for comparison.
So, please with sugar and honey on top and a sweet chai on the side… I am NOT suggesting that you kill the colors; just add a choice that allows us, designers who make a living from use of software to create new layers with a default color of BLACK and if we need to, we can change it ourselves.
To make it even better, allow assigning a default color for new layers so that those eagle vision users who love working on a layer with YELLOW color outlines can always use that choice.
I am not making this suggestion because I started using ILL yesterday; I have used it since version 88, long before many of the team were walking and beta tested it.

TLDR: check boxes with the ability to turn off the current colors to prevent them appearing

I work with black strokes, which renders the black layer pointless, and frustrating. I also find the same for yellow. Rather than having to delete the layers all the time (or change the color manually which doesn't necessarily solve the issue), it would be nice if we could choose out default layer colours in a preference panel. even a set of check boxes with the ability to turn off the current colors would be fine.

the yellow layer color has somehow become default for editing a symbol and it's impossible to work with. Anyone know how I can swap it to any other layer color permanently?

I aggree with Anom - Black is the worst color - can't see anything. I work on dark backgrounds usually, so I prefer light colors to dark. Ability to have a custom set would be very welcome. Or just the ability to delete black/yellow would be great.

Yup Yellow is the worst

Beg to differ! BLACK is the worst layer color ever!! but yellow is pretty bad too ;)

If you are setting up the same type of file all day long(say it always has 8 layers, and 6 default colors, etc. etc) you can build a file that is your base line starting file(what you would like the file to look like when you created a new doc) and either A. save it as a new document profile B. save it over the current default new doc profile(usually called 'print') or C. Save it as an illustrator template.

Bad news is that this will not stop illustrator from creating layers that default to the color yellow. good news is you shouldn't have to deal with changing it in EVERY file you build, and hopefully it will push it way down in the auto order...

hope this helps!

Normally the first layer that is created is Black lines by default but as we make more layers, each new one gets a new color. The problem is that most of these NEW colors are not very visible on the most used background being white. Since the first days I have requested that there be a choice to lock the color of the new layers created to be Black or a chosen color unless the user wants to change it. At present, every file that I work on has about 20+ layer s and I have to change color at least 15 times to see my outlines, etc.
I have used AI since the 88 version.

Please remove layer colors that lack contrast based on the currently used foreground color, or some predictive algorithm of last used colors. When CREATING A NEW LAYER AND working using black lines (most common) colors like yellow, black, greys, etc. are almost totally useless because of the lack of contrast. It's just one more tedious hassle to have to double click and change the layer color back to something like pink or blue so you can actually see what you are working on.

Other than just removing the yellow layer color, how about making it a preference/option to have all new layers with the same light blue (or custom color)?

ONLY dark colours should be there. NO Yellow, light Green, light Pink.
Please fix.

light colors like yellow should NEVER be in the list of auto created layer colors! At least just move the yellow color to the end of the line. Worst layer color ever.

light colors like that should NEVER be in the list of auto created layer colors... we should still be able to select if we want...