If you’re like me you don’t like bright whites on applications burning your eyes while using your PC in the later hours and you also like to have a bright screen during the day when the sun is shining. Windows does have a dark and light theme, but they do not switch automatically, meaning you will have to go into settings and do it yourself.
To fix this issue I did some task scheduler magic to automatically change the theme. I got the instructions from this site. However it might not be the best solution and I had some issues of Windows setting the wrong theme when one or more schedules were missed. After some searching around I found a better solution.
The better solution:
A nice free and open source app on GitHub makes it possible to painlessly set how you would like the automatic light and dark mode settings to run.
Download it here
Click Click here to download the newest version of Auto Dark Mode! and scroll down on the newest version to the assets tab where you can find the setup.exe.
Once downloaded, run the setup and follow the installation instructions.
The program will automatically open once the setup finishes and you will be greeted with some settings.
If you close the program you can always open it again from the start menu.
In the time settings of the program you can enable auto switching of light and dark mode and choose the time of when the switching happens.
In the apps tab you can select what apps you want to adapt to the dark mode as well, most of the time you want it to adapt to system so that your web browser is also in dark mode.
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Another neat feature is to make your desktop background change when in light or dark mode. For example in light mode you might want a background with vibrant colors and dark mode one that is more calm and includes a darker color scheme.
In the settings tab you get some general settings and preferences such as language and clock format. Update settings are also available as well as user account options.
The other couple tabs include information on the program and a place to donate to the developer who kindly made this program for anyone to use free of charge.
Is it safe?
This program is definitely safe. A lot of people think that nothing is really free and that a free piece of software is just harvesting your data for money, but that is not the case in this program. This program is different as it is open source. That means that anyone can see how the source code works and that the program is safe to use. It’s exposing the inside of the program so that anyone can use it, see how it works, and make their own version of it.
So yes, since we can see how this program works we can verify that it is not a virus and your computer would be safe using it.
Do you recommend it?
Yes I highly recommend this software, as there would be no harm in trying it out. It’s easy to install and remove as well as the software is free. It had a lot of other features that I didn’t think about until getting the software and it is in general an awesome and useful program.
After 1 month of using the software:
I still use and will continue to use this software after a month of testing it. It’s worked great. It is tricky, however, to configure themes in windows with this software. I don’t really blame the software, but windows, because of many issues with their theme configuration. For instance you cannot edit a current theme, but instead have to delete the old theme and make a new one. For my light mode I don’t like the whole taskbar being white, which is why I use custom themes. I also change my desktop background from the nostalgic bliss wallpaper during the day to a fanmade night version of bliss as my wallpaper at night. It is excellent software once you get it configured, as I said Windows themes are a bit finicky at times, but the result made using my computer at night more enjoyable.
More information here
I was not sponsored by anyone for recommending this program. It’s free and open source anyway so there is no point to. I just was glad I found it and needed a new blog post.