Change Appearance settings on Mac

On your Mac, use Appearance settings to change the overall look of macOS and choose how you use scroll bars. Learn how to use a light or dark appearance.

To change these settings, choose Apple menu > System Settings, then click Appearance in the sidebar. (You may need to scroll down.)

Open Appearance settings for me

Option	Description
Appearance	Choose the appearance for buttons, menus and windows on your Mac. Auto switches the appearance from light to dark, based on the Night Shift schedule you set. If no schedule is set, Auto switches the appearance based on sunrise and sunset times. Auto won’t switch the appearance until your Mac has been idle for at least a minute. See Change Night Shift settings. Light provides a light appearance that doesn’t change. Dark provides a darkened appearance so the content you’re working on stands out while windows and controls seem to recede into the background. It’s effective for viewing documents, presentations, photos, films, web pages and more.
Colour	Choose the colour to use for buttons, pop-up menus and other UI controls.
Text highlight colour	Choose the colour to use for highlighting selected text.
Icon & widget style	Choose the colour, background and behaviour of icons and widgets. Default: Items are opaque, and the background is either light or coloured, depending on the app. Dark: Items are opaque and have a darkened appearance. Choose Always to always show items in Dark style. Choose Auto to switch between Dark and Light, depending on system appearance. Clear: Items are transparent. Choose Light for a light appearance, choose Dark for a darker appearance or choose Auto to switch between Dark and Light, depending on system appearance. Tinted: Items are opaque against a dark background. Icons, text and graphics are displayed in the colour selected under Theme in the Appearance pane.
Folder colour	Choose the colour to use for folder icons in the Finder. (This option appears when Default, Dark or Clear is selected for Icon & widget style.)
Icon, widget and folder colour	Choose the colour to use for icons and widgets, and for folder icons in the Finder. (This option appears when Tinted is selected for Icon & widget style.)
Sidebar icon size	Choose small, medium or large icons for the Finder sidebar and for the sidebar in apps such as Mail, News and Photos. The size of text in the sidebar also changes.
Allow wallpaper tinting in windows	Allow colours from the wallpaper to subtly tint certain window areas, such as toolbars or status bars.
Show scroll bars	Scroll bars appear in a window when there’s content that doesn’t fit into the window’s current size. Choose an option to control when scroll bars are shown: Automatically based on mouse or trackpad: Scroll bars are shown depending on the mouse or trackpad you’re using. If your device allows gestures, scroll bars are hidden until you start scrolling. Otherwise, they’re visible. When scrolling: Hide scroll bars until you start scrolling. Always: Scroll bars are always shown.
Click in the scroll bar to	Jump to the next page: Clicking in the scroll bar moves the content page by page. Jump to the spot that’s clicked: Moves to the spot where you’re clicking; for example, if you click at the bottom of the scroll bar, you go to the bottom of the document. To momentarily switch between scrolling methods while working, press and hold the Option key while clicking the scroll bar.

To increase the size of text and icons, see Make text and icons bigger.

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Mac User Guide

Change Appearance settings on Mac