So it's a good bet that the current, more pleasing operation, which now works great, is here to stay. Previous betas enabled this feature, and only problematically, on the Unix command line. While there's no guarantee that that this feature will survive to the final OS X Yosemite 10.10 release, the prognosis looks good. In Yosemite, go to System Preferences > General and check the box for 'Use dark menu bar and Dock.' The effect takes place immediately. My own theory is that the feature isn't to conserve energy but, rather, a feature designed to reduce the amount of light striking our eyes from those areas in very low light conditions - such as an airliner on a night flight with cabin lights dimmed - when turning down the whole screen brightness just doesn't do the trick or isn't visually pleasing. As an operating system, Mac OS has always tried to make things sleek and minimalist on your desktop. Furthermore, the Dynamic Desktop feature changes the image on your desktop to match the time of the day. You can read more about that at Scientific American and Techlogg.ĭark Mode affects several areas of the Yosemite display. With Mojave, you can mute the colors of the interface, so you don’t find yourself blinded when working at night thanks to the Dark Mode. Even so, the difference in energy between a black pixel and a white one isn't dramatic. I doubt if it's for energy savings because the LCD's LED backlight is always on, and it takes a bit of extra energy to block that light and turn pixels black. In my reading, I can't find anyone who knows for sure why this feature exists. Turning the menu background to a dark gray with white text.

Perhaps, at some point, Jony Ive asked: 'Why must that be so?' And so, behold, we have Dark Mode. No one is quite sure why it's there, but it's very cool.įrom the dawn of Mac time, menus have been black text on a white background. OS X Yosemite public beta enables an intriguing feature referred to as Dark Mode.

Os x dark mode