Your Mac may get some sort of system-wide Dark Mode with macOS 10.14

Apple may be working to expand its Dark Mode-like feature for macOS.

Brazilian developer Guilherme Rambo took a look at a WebKit nightly build posted back in March, discovering that Mac computers might get some sort of system-wide dark look on macOS 10.14. “The code in question is designed to adapt WebKit’s rendering of a website based on the effective appearance of the app,” he wrote.

“Appearances” are how macOS changes the look of UI components like buttons and lists based on assets provided by the system. However, Irish developer Steve Troughton-Smith advised against conflating developer terms with user terms.

“The appearance system has been around for a few years,” he said. ”This suggests merely that (some? internal?) WebKit apps may want to know about the dark menu bar and dock, not necessarily that all apps do.”

Apple introduced limited Dark Mode-like appearance with OS X Yosemite.

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Activated by venturing to System Preferences → General, and checking the option Use Dark Menu Bar and Dock, it simply makes your Mac’s Dock, menus, the menu bar and the Spotlight Search overlay darker in appearance.

What this is not is a true dark mode.

Troughton-Smith argues that exposing the dark menu bar and dock appearance setting to macOS apps would make a lot of sense. “No idea why it wasn’t a public API before,” he added.

Interestingly enough, back in July 2016 Guilherme had managed to find a way to enable a more comprehensive dark appearance for Apple’s stock Mac apps such as Safari and System Preferences. You can see those screenshots included in this article.

This might mean Apple’s has been building support for a full-on Dark Mode feature for a future macOS update. At least we now know that the company is testing this feature internally.

WebKit’s code also suggests that iOS 12 will support iPhone 5s, like iOS 11 and older versions. If true, that would make iPhone 5s, Apple’s first 64-bit smartphone, the oldest iPhone model supported by the mobile operating system.

Despite the rumors about a true Dark Mode for iPhone, iPad and Mac, Apple has yet to announce anything for iOS or macOS with regard to this sought-after feature.

But we should know more soon in terms of Apple’s plans, if any, for a system-wide Dark Mode in iOS and macOS—in about a month and half, the Cupertino tech giant will preview iOS 12, macOS 10.14 and other OS updates at its Worldwide Developers Conference.

How badly do you want to see a true Dark Mode in macOS?

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