If you are working late at night or reading a massive PDF document that uses a glaring white background, the bright light can quickly cause severe eye strain. While macOS features a system-wide Dark Mode, many older websites and PDFs outright ignore it. To force a dark background on absolutely everything on your screen, you can use the built-in Accessibility feature to instantly invert your Mac’s display colours.
How to Enable Invert Colors
We will configure a keyboard shortcut so you can instantly flip your screen colours on and off whenever you need to read a bright document.
- Click the Apple Logo in the top-left corner of your screen.
- Select System Settings… from the dropdown menu.
- Scroll down the left-hand sidebar and click on Keyboard.
- On the right side, click the Keyboard Shortcuts… button.
- In the new window, select Accessibility from the left list.
- Find the option labelled Invert colors and check the box next to it to enable the shortcut.
- Click the blue Done button.
You can now instantly invert your entire display at any time by pressing Control + Option + Command + 8. Every white background will instantly turn pitch black, and black text will turn white. This affects the entire operating system, including images and videos. When you are finished reading your document and want to return to normal, simply press the exact same four-key shortcut again.