Explore the Dark Side of Mojave: Understanding, Enabling, and Customizing Dark Mode

Originally published at: https://tidbits.com/2018/10/01/explore-the-dark-side-of-mojave-understanding-enabling-and-customizing-dark-mode/

Do you find yourself turning down the brightness on your Mac screen to make it more comfortable to look at? Particularly if you’re sensitive to light or often work in a darkened room, macOS 10.14 Mojave’s new Dark mode might be easier on your eyes.

I genrally like the Dark Mode. I’ve gotten used to it in Adobe applications like InDesign and Photoshop.

After trying it in Mojave both with Dark and Light, what I’ve done is to install the NightOwl utility (free!) to view Dark after sunset, and Light during the day (you can set a different schedule). I’ve had no problems with the utility, and I like that it switches automatically. It gives a little “night owl” hoot when it switches mode.

Small correction: The setting in Mail to change the mode of messages is in Preferences > Viewing, not Preferences > General.

Is it coming to iOS?

I don’t have much use for dark mode on MacOS but on iOS it would be great – I love to read the Economist on my iPad when in bed, because its app has a “dark mode” – which doesn’t disturb my wife who tends to sleep before me :slight_smile:

I’m still liking f.lux which also switches to it’s own version of “Dark Mode” at night, along with dimming the screen gradually in the evening.

I haven’t tried it yet. But after reading this article I have to say it sounds a bit finicky. I feel like my usual manual adjustment of overall brightness will continue to serve me well. Like Peter I would, however, be interested in a dark reading mode on iOS. I really enjoy the dark reading mode in iBooks when I’m reading in bed. It would be great if that were also available in Safari Reader for example.

Safari Reader does have a dark mode. For Reader preferences, while in Reader, click on the “aA” button at the right end of the address/search bar.

Ha! Never noticed that. Thanks for the tip, Jeffrey.

I have only one complaint with Dark Mode. Safari displays insufficient contrast between active and inactive tabs. The contrast is also reduced in Light Mode, but not so much that it is unusable. This really needs to be fixed. I’m not sure that this one bad feature can be fixed with a global setting in Accessibility without introducing other problems.

It appears that any app that uses WebKit will probably still have light/white background. I’m not sure I want my browser to make that kind of decision for me anyway, nor would most web designers! Perhaps Apple can work with W3C to enable user controls to basically invert bright and dark objects based on a minimum amount of contrast or luminosity. Sounds like a lot of problems for web designers who pretty much want to set the colors, contrast, etc. and may also have mandates from clients. Most brands have specific color values for their logos.

I thought the dark text on light colored background vs the opposite argument had been settled years ago… guess not.

Howard Oakley has identified some bugs with Dark mode: