If you are experiencing severe visual impairments or simply need to increase screen contrast to reduce eye strain in extreme lighting conditions, macOS includes a powerful accessibility feature that instantly inverts the colours on your display.
When enabled, every colour on the screen is mathematically reversed. A pure white background becomes pitch black, while dark text turns bright white. This system-wide change affects every application, menu, and image on your Mac simultaneously.
How to Invert Colours Using System Settings
This feature is buried within the Accessibility menus, as it is designed primarily for users who require permanent visual accommodations.
- Click the Apple Logo in the top-left corner of the menu bar.
- Select System Settings (or System Preferences on older versions of macOS).
- Scroll down the left-hand sidebar and click on Accessibility.
- In the main panel, under the “Vision” section, click on Display.
- Look for the toggle switch labelled Invert colours.
- Toggle the switch to the ON position.
Your screen will immediately switch to the inverted colour palette. To return your Mac to its normal state, simply toggle the switch back to the OFF position.
Classic Invert vs. Smart Invert
macOS actually offers two different methods of inverting your screen, and it is important to understand the difference depending on what you are trying to achieve.
In the same Accessibility > Display menu, you will see two options:
- Classic Invert: This is a brutal, mathematical inversion of every single pixel on the screen. While it helps with reading text, it will severely distort photographs and videos (making them look like photo negatives).
- Smart Invert: This is an intelligent inversion that reverses the colours of the user interface (like turning a white window background black) but actively detects and preserves the original colours of images, media, and some third-party apps that already use dark themes.
If you are simply trying to make your Mac easier on the eyes at night, Smart Invert is highly recommended over Classic Invert. (Alternatively, you may just want to enable the native macOS “Dark Mode” from the Appearance settings, which is distinct from the Accessibility invert features).
How to Toggle Invert Colours Quickly
If you need to invert your screen frequently, navigating through System Settings every time is inefficient. You can add an Accessibility shortcut to your menu bar or use a keyboard combination.
- Go to System Settings > Accessibility.
- Scroll to the very bottom of the page and click Shortcut.
- Tick the box next to Invert Colours.
Now, whenever you press the Touch ID button three times rapidly (or press Option + Command + F5 on Macs without Touch ID), a small menu will pop up on your screen allowing you to instantly toggle the colour inversion on or off.