Use a light or dark appearance on your Mac

You can use a light or dark appearance for the menu bar, Dock, windows, and built-in apps on your Mac, or automatically adjust the appearance from light to dark during the day.

From left to right, samples of the Auto, Light, and Dark options shown in Appearance settings.
  1. Go to the System Settings app on your Mac.

  2. Click Appearance in the sidebar. (You may need to scroll down.)

    Open Appearance settings for me

  3. Select Auto, Light, or Dark.

    • Auto switches the appearance from light to dark based on the Night Shift schedule you set. See Change Night Shift settings.

      Auto won’t switch the appearance until your Mac has been idle for at least a minute.

    • Light is a light appearance that doesn’t change.

    • Dark is a dark appearance that doesn’t change. Dark Mode darkens the color scheme so the content you’re working on stands out, while windows and controls seem to recede into the background. It’s effective for viewing documents, presentations, photos, movies, webpages, and more.

      Tip: You can quickly turn Dark Mode on or off in Control Center. In the menu bar, click the Control Center status menu, click the disclosure button next to Display, then click Dark Mode.

In Appearance settings, you can also choose an accent color for buttons, pop-up menus, and other UI controls, and a highlight color to use for highlighting selected text.

Some dynamic wallpaper pictures may provide still images so the wallpaper doesn’t distract from the light or dark appearance. For example, if you chose the dark appearance during macOS setup, the wallpaper is set to a dark still image. You can change this picture. See Wallpaper settings.

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