Roughly two weeks ago Apple released their latest OS, macOS Mojave. While I run a handful of applications in dark mode already, Apple implemented dark mode rather poorly. In my opinion, some applications, such as Notes and iCal are simply too dark. Wouldn’t it be great to only have the menu bar and dock in dark mode?

Fortunately, that’s possible with the following steps:

1. Head over to System Preferences » General and select Light for Appearances
2. Open a terminal and run the following command:

   defaults write -g NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance -bool Yes

3. Log out and in again (if wanted, use the terminal):

   sudo pkill loginwindow

4. Head over to System Preferences » General and select Dark for Appearances

Et voilà! macOS Mojave now uses the dark mode only for the menu bar and the dock, but not for all other windows.

In case you want to revert this setting in the future, simply repeat the steps above, but run the following command on step 2 instead:

defaults write -g NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance -bool No

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