A sticky note app follows dark mode on a Mac when it reads the appearance you chose in System Settings › Appearance and redraws its notes to match, with no separate switch of its own. A good dark sticky note keeps its colour as a deep, tinted paper with light text, rather than staying bright or turning a flat grey. Many note apps manage only half of that, which is why a desk full of notes can glare at you at night.
This piece covers how the Mac decides between light and dark, what Apple documents about Stickies in dark mode, why notes so often look wrong after sunset, and a short test you can run on any note app in two minutes.
How does dark mode work on a Mac?
macOS has one appearance setting for the whole system, and apps are expected to follow it. Apple's guide to using a light or dark appearance puts it in System Settings, under Appearance in the sidebar, with three choices:
| Choice | What it does |
|---|---|
| Light | A light appearance that does not change |
| Dark | A dark appearance that does not change |
| Auto | Switches between light and dark through the day, following the Night Shift schedule you set |
Two details about Auto matter for note apps. First, the switch happens while your apps are running, so an app has to redraw itself on the spot rather than only at launch. Second, Apple says Auto will not switch until your Mac has been idle for at least a minute, so the change tends to arrive when you come back to the desk, not in the middle of a sentence.
You can also flip it by hand. In the menu bar, open Control Center, click the disclosure button next to Display, then click Dark Mode. That is the fastest way to test an app, and the test section below uses it.
Should a note app have its own light and dark switch?
Apple's design guidance says no. The Human Interface Guidelines on Dark Mode tell developers to avoid an app-specific appearance setting, because it makes people adjust more than one setting to get the look they want, and because people may think an app is broken when it ignores their system-wide choice. The same page asks apps to look good in both appearances and to keep text comfortably legible in each.
So an app that follows the system is not missing a feature. It is doing what the platform asks. The cost is that you cannot keep one app light while the rest of the Mac is dark, and some people genuinely want that. It is a fair trade to know about before you choose.
Does Apple Stickies support dark mode?
Apple does not say. The Stickies guide on changing the look of a note documents a Color menu for the note's colour, Window › Translucent to make a note semi-transparent, and Font › Show Fonts for text formatting. It says nothing about dark mode or the system appearance. Treat Stickies' behaviour at night as not documented, and check it on your own Mac with the Control Center toggle above.
Stickies still does a lot well. It ships with macOS, costs nothing, needs no account, keeps its notes on your Mac, and its per-note colours and translucency are real, simple controls. If you want the full side-by-side, HushNotes compared with Stickies lists what each one does, with a source for every Apple claim.
Why do sticky notes look wrong in dark mode?
Most note apps look wrong at night for one of two opposite reasons: they stay bright, or they throw their colour away.
Bright paper on a dark desk
The first failure is the common one. The menu bar, the Dock and your other windows go dark, and your notes stay pale yellow, pink and blue. In daylight that looked cheerful. In a dim room, with your eyes adjusted to a dark screen, a pale note is the brightest thing in view, and it pulls your eye every time you look up. Several notes at once read as a row of lamps.
Apple's own guidance points at the same effect from another angle. The Human Interface Guidelines suggest slightly darkening images with white backgrounds in dark mode, to stop the white from glowing against everything around it. A pale sticky note is exactly that kind of glowing rectangle, and it sits on top of your work by design.
Inverted to grey or black
The second failure is the overcorrection. An app swaps every note for the same charcoal card with white text. Nothing glares any more, but the colours you used to tell notes apart are gone. If pink meant "today" and green meant "waiting on someone", the whole desk now says nothing at a glance.
Colours that were never meant for the dark
A third problem shows up in apps that let you pick your own colours. You choose a soft paper and a dark ink in the afternoon, and at night the app either leaves them alone (so your note glares) or flips the ink without checking it against the paper (so your text goes muddy). Worse, a few apps change the saved colour itself, so when daylight returns your carefully picked shade has drifted.
What should a dark sticky note look like?
A good dark sticky note keeps its colour, darkens its paper, lightens its ink, and stays readable. That breaks down into a short list you can hold any app to.
- The colour survives. A pink note becomes a deep, dusky pink paper, not grey. You can still tell your notes apart from across the screen.
- The paper is warm and dark, not black. A dark that keeps a little warmth sits more quietly on the desk than pure black and reads more like paper.
- The ink is light. Cream or near-white text on the dark paper, ideally warmed slightly toward the note's own colour so it does not look pasted on.
- The contrast is measured. The common floor is 4.5:1 between text and background: it is the WCAG minimum for normal text, and Apple's Dark Mode guidance asks for no lower than 4.5:1, striving for 7:1 for custom colours and small text. Notes are small text almost by definition.
- It follows the system, live. When Auto switches at dusk, every note switches too, without a relaunch.
- Your saved colours are left alone. The app works out a dark version when it draws the note. What you picked is still exactly what you picked when the Mac goes light again.
- See-through notes go dark too. If a note is translucent, the material behind the text should be dark glass at night, not a pale frost over a dark desk.
Here is how the three common approaches compare.
| Approach | Glare at night | Note colours kept | Text contrast |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paper stays bright | High | Yes | Fine, but the note glows |
| Every note turns grey or black | Low | No | Usually fine |
| Deep tinted paper, light ink | Low | Yes | Fine when it is measured |
The third row is the hardest to build: every colour needs a dark counterpart checked against the ink, including colours you picked yourself.
How to test a note app in dark mode
You can judge any sticky note app in about two minutes. Set it up in light mode first, then work through these steps.
- Make one note in every colour the app offers, and put a few lines of normal-size text in each.
- If the app lets you pick a custom paper or ink colour, make one note with your own choice.
- Make one note translucent, if the app supports it, and put a busy window behind it.
- Open Control Center, click the disclosure button next to Display, and click Dark Mode. Leave the note app running while you do it.
- Look at the desk from normal sitting distance. Does any note glow? Can you still tell the colours apart?
- Read a line on each note without leaning in, including the custom one and the translucent one.
- Switch back to light, and check that your custom colour is exactly what you picked.
Step 4 is the one apps fail most quietly. Some only read the appearance at launch, so they look right in the morning and wrong after Auto switches in the evening. Step 7 catches the apps that rewrite your choices.
How HushNotes handles dark mode
From HushNotes 1.1.3, the whole app follows your Mac's appearance by default. Choose Light, Dark or Auto in System Settings › Appearance, or flip it from Control Center, and HushNotes follows, including when Auto switches while the app is open. If you want HushNotes to stay one way whatever the Mac does, set Settings › General › Appearance to Light or Dark instead of System.
Notes keep their tint
Each note keeps its tint and becomes deep tinted paper with light ink. A Rose note turns into a deep rose, a Green note into a deep green, and so on for all six tints, so the colours you use to sort your desk still mean the same thing at night. The dark papers are warm rather than black or cool grey, and the default ink becomes a cream that leans slightly toward the paper's own colour. Light mode looks exactly as it did before.
Your own colours get a dark version, and are never rewritten
If you made a custom theme or set a note's paper or ink by hand, HushNotes works out a dark version of it when it draws the note. The dark version keeps the hue you chose. What you saved is never changed: switch back to light and your colour is exactly what you picked.
Every theme also has a Dark choice in the theme editor: Automatic (the worked-out version), Same as Light (keep your light colours in dark mode too), or Custom (pick the dark paper and ink yourself).
A few details follow from that rule:
- A custom ink you chose is kept in dark mode if it is still readable on the dark paper. If it is not, it is lifted to a lighter ink of the same hue.
- A paper you picked that is already dark is left as it is.
- The stock wallpapers have their own dark versions. A picture you imported yourself is shown as it is, with the ink you chose for it, because it is your image.
- A see-through note shows the desk through dark glass rather than pale frost.
Contrast is measured, not eyeballed
Body text on every note paper is held to at least 4.5:1 contrast, the WCAG minimum, with 7:1 as the target for note ink. The app's own checks test every built-in tint and every stock wallpaper in both appearances, so a tint that read well in daylight cannot quietly turn muddy at night.
The rest of the app follows too
The Shelf, Settings, the theme editor, popovers, onboarding and the permission panels all follow the system appearance. The one deliberate exception is the capture capsule, the small dark pill that confirms a capture when you press ⌥⇧Space. It stays dark in both appearances, on purpose, as it always has.
What it does not do
- A picture you imported as a wallpaper has no separate dark version. It looks the same in both appearances.
The rest of what a note does is unchanged in the dark. Notes still float above every app, full-screen ones included, and ⌥⇧H still hides every note at once. Your note windows also stay out of screen shares and recordings through Apple's own window sharing setting, which HushNotes uses, in either appearance. The floating notes page shows how the notes behave on the desk, and hiding notes from screen sharing explains the screen-share side.
How we checked: Apple's appearance guide, the Stickies guide and the Human Interface Guidelines were read on 11 October 2026.
FAQ
How do I turn on dark mode on my Mac?
Open System Settings, click Appearance in the sidebar, and choose Dark. Choose Auto to switch between light and dark through the day, or use Control Center › Display › Dark Mode to flip it quickly.
Does Stickies have a dark mode?
Apple's Stickies guide does not mention dark mode or the system appearance. It documents the Color menu and Window › Translucent, so check how Stickies looks at night on your own Mac.
Why are my sticky notes so bright in dark mode?
The app is keeping its light paper colours when the rest of the Mac goes dark. Pale paper is the brightest thing on a dark screen, so it glares; an app that follows dark mode properly darkens the paper and lightens the text instead.
Can HushNotes stay light while my Mac is in dark mode?
Yes. HushNotes follows the Mac by default, as Apple's design guidance recommends, but Settings › General › Appearance can keep it Light or Dark whatever the Mac does.
Will dark mode change the note colours I picked?
Not in HushNotes. The dark version of a colour is worked out when the note is drawn, and the colour you saved stays exactly as you picked it. If you would rather choose the dark colours yourself, set the theme's Dark choice to Custom.