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Mac Dark Mode from Command Line

By David Walsh on January 30, 2019

One of the best professional decisions I ever made was switching to a dark text editor theme. I suffered from horrible headaches for years, partially caused by late night coding sessions with blindingly bright computer screens. Recently Apple implemented a dark OS theme which helps my eyes, and thinking in a command line state of mind, I was wondering if there was a way to change dark or light mode via command line...and I found out how!

Switching between light and dark mode via command line is done via a boolean flag:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist _HIEnableThemeSwitchHotKey -bool true

The good news is that switching between color preferences can be done with one command; the bad news is that you need to restart your machine for the new theme to take effect.

For years I switched to dark themes on iPhone apps and text editors; I'm so thankful that Apple has afforded us this feature on laptops and desktops. Your eyes are important -- protect them!

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Discussion