Fruity Picks #10 - NightOwl for Mojave (macOS 10.14)

I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed writing this blog and I’m really pleased I’ve picked it up again. But after an absence of two years, it’s actually quite hard to know where to focus; so much has been going on. But, that’s part of the reason that I started the Fruity Picks series, to help me out when I was stuck for an in-depth post. So, now is as good a time as any to revive the Fruity Picks with #10 - NightOwl.

I’ve been using Mojave (macOS 10.14) since just before the formal public release in September. One of the things I had been looking forward to was Dark Mode and by and large I wasn’t disappointed. But as in all things, you can have too much of a good thing, and moving to Dark Mode as a permanent UI choice wasn’t for me, especially in the northern hemisphere where it’s dark enough during the short days.

Of course, it’s easy enough to change from Light Mode to Dark Mode, but a German student, Benjamin Kramser, has developed a great (free) little tool to automate the process through user-specified parameters.

NightOwl lives in the menu bar and allows you to schedule when Dark Mode kicks in and out (either on a fixed sunrise/sunset basis or your chosen times). You can also choose to overwrite specific application settings so those apps will always display in Light Mode. Finally, you can toggle modes using a hotkey combo. Small and simple - just like me!

NightOwl lives in the menubar and does one thing really well

You can download NightOwl from the website (which, by the way, is beautifully designed) and you can also provide a PayPal donation via the site. The software is currently at version 0.2.8