#DOWNLOAD TEXT EDIT FOR MAC WINDOWS#

What Use Dark Background for Windows does is to invert all the black and white inside TextEdit’s windows, the surrounds of which are put into normal Dark Mode. So it’s the wrong command in the wrong menu, which isn’t a good start. That isn’t what it does, either, and this is the only menu command in TextEdit’s View menu which doesn’t just apply to the frontmost window, but is actually an app-wide setting. For a start, it doesn’t offer Dark Mode as an option, but Use Dark Background for Windows instead. This new version of TextEdit works totally differently.

It also displayed the view inside each of its windows in perpetual Light Mode, with a white background, and didn’t offer any other appearance. Left to its own devices, its default text remained fixed black even when displayed by another app (like DelightEd) on the dark grey background of Dark Mode. The previous version of TextEdit couldn’t itself create such bimodal text. Text which is set in any other colour, such as black or dark purple, is assumed to remain that colour regardless of the appearance mode prevailing, and to retain that colour when copied and pasted into other apps, according to the general rule of consistency in the human interface.

Text which is set in that colour is rendered in a colour appropriate to the appearance mode in use: if the background is the dark grey of Dark Mode, it will be shown in white if the background is the white of Light Mode, it will be shown in black. If you open bimodal Rich Text generated by a ‘proper’ editor (such as DelightEd), you’ll see that there is a special entry in its expanded colour table which is nominally black, but named textColor. MacOS support for Dark Mode built these behaviours in during early testing last summer. Users expect two different text behaviours: some text should be set in fixed colours which must be respected regardless of the appearance, but other text is expected to change its appearance according to which mode is selected by the user (bimodal). Implementing Dark Mode in a Rich Text editor isn’t an easy task – I know because I have been trying to do this properly in DelightEd. As far as I can see, it’s likely to put you off using TextEdit ever again. I write sort of because Apple neither calls it Dark Mode, nor does it work the way that you might expect it to. In Apple’s release notes for the Mojave 10.14.2 update, it neglected to mention that TextEdit version 1.14, included with that update, now offers a sort of Dark Mode in its windows.

Download text edit for mac