How does auto appearance work?

[Rydawg96]

So this is rather weird, in System Prefrences, I have 3 options for apperance. Either light, dark or auto. The problem is I dont know what auto does even. I know on iOS it either works on a timed schedule or from sunset to sunrise, but on macOS theres no such controls.

 

[Heat_Fan89]

Auto does the same thing in macOS as it does in iOS or iPadOS if Location is turned on. In macOS my theme goes dark automatically at Sunset and it goes Light from Sunrise.

 

[Rydawg96]

Auto does the same thing in macOS as it does in iOS or iPadOS if Location is turned on. In macOS my theme goes dark automatically at Sunset and it goes Light from Sunrise.

Nope, its past sunset in my area and it hasn't gone dark.

 

[jpn]

Nope, its past sunset in my area and it hasn't gone dark.

when you set it to Dark, does yr Safari window have a black background immediately?
if yes, then the issue you have is one related to time.

btw, apple seems to use a non-standard definition of sunset timing (apple's sunset is a bit later than precise sunset time), but at any rate, i have also found that after setting to Auto it might take at least one full reboot and at least a few days in that time zone for it to take affect routinely.
Auto took around 2 weeks on my machine to reliably kick in automatically (if I reboot after sunset it would go Dark immediately however).
if you are traveling make sure you have Timezone set to auto based on Location.
also, on my machine, even though i use the auto change default desktop wallpaper, the desktop picture as well would not reliably change throughout the day until about 2 weeks after setting it to Auto.
i am traveling constantly so i just figured it had to do with that;
but actually now both desktop and app window are consistently catching up with me no matter which timezone i am in, so its working really well now. it did take time however.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

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[Seanm87]

Keep in mind if you have night shift set to come on automatically it links to this (which is really annoying because in iOS they are separate). So if the sun sets at 8pm but your night shift is manually set to 10pm it won't activate until this time.