14 DAY TRIAL // On June 2, at the Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple demoed numerous visual enhancements in OS X 10.10, including an all-new dark mode that makes the system easier on the eyes.
A feature that will prove particularly helpful for workaholics who use their Macs late at night, Dark Mode currently doesn’t have a standard On/Off toggle in the System Preferences, but the feature is there, hidden behind an easy Terminal command.
One way to summon it is to use this command recommended by developer Hamza Sood. Just launch Terminal and type this in, followed by your administrator password.
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences AppleInterfaceTheme Dark
You’ll need to log out of your account and then log back in for the change to take effect. If you’ve done everything correctly, your OS X 10.10 desktop should look like the screenshot above. Sudo commands are tricky and may even result in data loss, so perform this tweak at your own risk. After all, simply using Yosemite poses the same kind of risk.
To revert back to your normal Yosemite interface, “either remove the key (defaults delete) or change it to ‘Light’,” the developer notes. The simplest way to do this is to just use the same Terminal command and replace Dark with Light, as shown below.
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences AppleInterfaceTheme Light