dark-mode-notify

This small Swift program will run a command whenever the dark mode status changes on macOS. You can use it to change your vim color config automatically for example.

Usage

Use make to compile the program, then run directly:

.build/release/dark-mode-notify <your-program>

Alternatively you can install it by doing make install.

The program will be run immediately when the command starts, and every time the OS goes from dark mode to light mode or back. The environment variable DARKMODE will be set to either 1 or 0.

Background agent

To keep this program running in the background, compile the binary to somewhere and create the following file at ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ke.bou.dark-mode-notify.plist. Don't forget to replace the arguments and the path to the logs (which comes in handy for debugging)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>ke.bou.dark-mode-notify</string>
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <true/>
    <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
    <string>----Path to a location----/dark-mode-notify-stderr.log</string>
    <key>StandardOutPath</key>
    <string>----Path to a location----/dark-mode-notify-stdout.log</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
       <string>/usr/local/bin/dark-mode-notify</string>
       <string>--- Path to your script ---</string>
    </array>
</dict>
</plist>

Then launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ke.bou.dark-mode-notify.plist will keep it running on boot.

Credit

This script is a lightly modified version of https://github.com/mnewt/dotemacs/blob/master/bin/dark-mode-notifier.swift