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Camilo Martinez
Camilo Martinez

Posted on • Edited on

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Enable Dark Mode in some macOS apps

For me Dark mode in macOS, it was a kind of deception. Once you choose the Dark side, it's all Dark or nothing... and you can't choose what apps you want in Light mode. Applications like Mail or Finder are ugliest in Dark mode and difficult to use.

Fortunately, there is a way to have Light Mode and use a command in Terminal to change only desired applications to Dark:

defaults write [Plist ID] NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance -bool [Option]
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Replace [Plist ID] and [Option] with the desired value.

Plist values:

ID Application
-g Dock & Menu
com.apple.notificationcenterui Notification Center
com.apple.Spotlight Spotlight
com.apple.finder Finder
com.apple.iChat Messages
com.apple.iCal Calendar
com.apple.iTunes iTunnes
com.apple.Terminal Terminal
com.apple.ActivityMonitor Activity Monitor
com.apple.AppStore App Store
com.apple.dt.Xcode Xcode
com.bohemiancoding.sketch3 Sketch
com.apple.Safari Safari
com.google.Chrome Google Chrome

You can go to ~/Library/Preferences and you can see a complete list of Plist names.

Option values:

Option Mode
FALSE Dark
TRUE Light

Once the command was executed restart the application. Only for Dock & Menu, you need to restart your session.


That's All Folks!
Happy Coding* 🖖

beer

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