Change macOS light and dark mode via command line

I normally have my macOS set to dark mode because developer, but sometimes I need to take screenshots for talk slides. For readability and accessibility, it’s important to have enough contrast, and often dark text on a light background is best. Aliases #Rather than having to click 🍎 > System Settings… > Appearance > Light, here’s a couple of aliases to do it from the command line: alias light-mode='osascript -e "tell app \"System Events\" to tell appearance preferences to set dark mode to false"' alias dark-mode='osascript -e "tell app \"System Events\" to tell appearance preferences to set dark mode to true"' Then I can type light-mode, take the screenshot, and then go back with dark-mode. See also #Some info on accessible presentations: GOV.WALES: How to create accessible PowerPoint presentations W3C Web Accessibility Initiative: Making Events Accessible Header photo: Snow basketball today (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Hugo van Kemenade).