The gorgeously subdued look is inspired by the dark appearance of Apple’s pro software such as Aperture and Final Cut Pro. In fact, I like it so much that I enthusiastically tweeted right after the keynote that I was very much looking forward to using it on a permanent basis come this Fall.
It seems that Dark Mode feature doesn’t exist in the first beta of OS X 10.10 and is nowhere to be found in the just-released Beta 2. For a good reason, too, as it’s unfinished and very much work in progress so not really ready for prime time yet.
If you’re a type of person who can’t wait to see it in action, you can enable Yosemite’s dark UI using just a simple Terminal command…
How to enable Yosemite’s dark mode using Terminal:
Launch Terminal using Spotlight or by firing it up from the Applications folder and paste the following line:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences AppleInterfaceTheme Dark
Type in your administrator password to execute the command. Quit Terminal, restart your Mac and voilà – you should launch straight into Yosemite’s dark mode.
As I told you, the somewhat functional feature is rough around the edges and not really ready for prime time yet. Luckily, you can just as easily revert back to light mode by pasting the following line into Terminal:
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences AppleInterfaceTheme Light
Again, upon providing your administrator password and restarting the machine, light mode will be re-enabled.
It’s awfully nice that the Dock participates in dark mode as well.
