2 Ways To Quickly Switch Between Light And Dark Mode On Your Mac

If you like to switch between light and dark mode frequently, you can create a keyboard shortcut or Dock icon to do it with one fast action. By using a very simple workflow in Automator, with no scripting required, you can create either a Quick Action or a application for your Dock. The Quick Action can then be assigned to a keyboard shortcut.

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Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost.com. In this episode let me show you how you can create a keyboard shortcut or an icon in the Dock so you can quickly switch between Light and Dark Modes on your Mac.
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So Dark Mode is a great thing and a lot of people like to use it. But some people like to switch between light and dark modes frequently throughout the day. Sometimes there's just some sort of task that are better suited towards one or the other. Other times we just like to breakup the fatigue of just staring at the screen by switching between light and dark modes. So what would be great is to have a switch where you can quickly switch with either one click or a keyboard shortcut between the two modes. You can set that up using Automator. Let's take a look.
So whether you're in Catalina or in Mojave if you go to System Preferences you can click on General and then you get the option to switch between light and dark modes. In Catalina you also get an Auto setting too. But what if you want to switch manually. If you just want to be able to switch quickly between light and dark and you don't want to launch System Preferences, go to General, and then go and click one of these buttons. Well you can get apps that can do this for you. But you don't need to install anything new onto your Mac to do this because you can create something very simple in Automator to do this and assign it to a keyboard shortcut even.
So just run Automator and then choose Quick Action. We're going to set this up as a Quick Action first. So Quick Action we're just going to Receive No Input from anything because we don't need any input for this. We're going to have it work in any application. You can change the icon and color if you want. I'll leave them as the defaults. Now we're going to look in here, under Actions, and make sure Library is selected so you can search everything. We're going to search for Appearance. There's one called Change System Appearance. We're going to drag that in here. What this allows us to do is to either toggle the Light and Dark modes, Switch to Dark, or Switch to Light. So we'll leave it on Toggle Light Dark.
Now this is all we want it to do. So I'm going to go to File, Save and I'm going to give it a name. This is the name that will appear then in the menu so I want to make sure it's something good. I'm going to do Light-Dark and Save it. So now when I go to any application menu like this, go to Services, I'll see Light-Dark there and I can select it to switch modes.
Now the first time you run this you may get asked permission.Like Automator wants permission to access System Appearance. You would have to say OK. Now unfortunately you're going to be asked this permission the first time you run this automated workflow in each app. So if you get asked in Automator you won't get asked in Automator again. If you then run another app, let's say Reminders, and I go to Services here and I switch then it's going to ask me in Reminders but once I say OK it will never ask me in Reminders again. It's a little annoying but it's the price we pay to be a little more secure.
Now that we have this in a menu item here we can assign a keyboard shortcut to it. So let's go into System Preferences and here I'm going to go to Keyboard and then Shortcuts and then I'm going to go to Add Shortcuts and hit the Plus button. I'm going to say in All Applications. Let's do the menu title and we have to type exactly whatever we called this workflow. It needs to match this perfectly. So, Light-Dark. Let's do the keyboard shortcut. I'm going to do Command Shift F1 and add it. Now you can see Light-Dark is Command Shift F1. We'll exit from there.
Now when we go to Services we'll see Command Shift F1 for Light-Dark. I can use that keyboard shortcut to quickly switch between light and dark modes. 
So as a bonus if you wanted this in the Dock instead what you could do is create an Automator workflow that is an Application instead. Then add the same thing there. Toggle Light Dark. We'll Save it in the Applications folder. We'll call it Light-Dark. You can save this in your Documents folder. Then if we go and look for that in the Finder, we'll go to the Applications folder here and find Light-Dark and I can drag that to the Dock and you can see it appear there. So now I can click that. It's going to ask permission the first time and after that I can switch as much as I want by hitting that in the Dock. So two different ways to do it.

Comments: 8 Responses to “2 Ways To Quickly Switch Between Light And Dark Mode On Your Mac”

Nick

3 weeks ago

Hey Gary. I tried doing same as you to use Command Shift F1 but forgot how to put in the Command and shift symbols…

Gary Rosenzweig

Nick: Not sure what you mean. You press Command+Shift+F1. You don’t “put in” the symbols anywhere. You just use those keys like you normally would.

Louise Kienast

On MacBook Pro I had to use the fn key before I could enter the shortcut.

When I press Command+Shift+F1 in the Keyboard Shortcut box, nothing appears. It remains blank. I also just tried what Louise suggested but that didn’t work either. Am I missing something here?

Louise: You can change how that works in System Preferences, Keyboard, Keyboard if you wish.

Nick: Yes, do check your FN key setting in System Preferences, Keyboard, Keyboard and understand how that setting works. Otherwise, make sure you have that field selected before you press the keys.

Got it. Thanks

Dennis Edwards

I tried Nightowl and it messed things up. I un-installed it and then most things did not go into dark mode The top of the screen and the dark sand wallpaper were dark but Safair and Text Edit where white. Firefox was still dark. I searched the web for a fix and the following worked for me. You MUST log out after.

defaults write -g NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance -bool No (this one worked for me)
if that does not work try the following
defaults delete -g NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance

2 Ways To Quickly Switch Between Light And Dark Mode On Your Mac

Comments: 8 Responses to “2 Ways To Quickly Switch Between Light And Dark Mode On Your Mac”

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