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Disabling Dark Mode for Specific Apps on MacOS

Date: 10 Mar 2020

#post/legacy #writing/guide

This post originally appeared on the very first blog


Since MacOS Mojave update, people have been asking me if it is possible to turn off dark appearance for a specific app while keeping the system theme dark. It turns out that there is a way to do that via command line. I will be using the Mac Reminders for demonstration.

H4 Step 1: Get App Identifier

The following command allows you to check the bundle identifier for your app. Remember to replace <Name of App> with the actual name of your app, which will be Reminders in this case.

osascript -e 'id of app "<Name of App>"'

H4 Step 2: Exclude the App from Dark Mode

Execute the following command with <Identifier> replaced with the output you get from running the previous command, for example com.apple.reminders for Reminders

defaults write <Identifier> NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance -bool Yes

H4 Step 3: Relaunch the App

Noticed that nothing has happened to your app yet, that’s because a relaunch is required for the changes to take effect. Quit the app and reopen it.

Now you should have your app in its bright appearance, enjoy.

H4 Can I Undo What I Just Did?

Sure your can, simply by running this command to remove the boolean argument property added by the last command.

defaults delete <Identifier> NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance

Then relaunch the app.