Dark mode PDFs on a Mac
Preview can now darken a PDF properly, which it could not do before. It still cannot make the change stick, so the file is bright again the moment it goes anywhere else.
No account required. Preview free, then £0.99 per document.
What macOS 26 added, and it is genuinely good
Preview gained View \u2192 Use Dark Appearance for PDF in macOS 26. It is not a crude inversion: text and line art are recoloured while photographs are largely left alone, which is exactly the distinction most dark modes get wrong. If you are on macOS 26 and reading in Preview, that is the first thing to try, and for a lot of people it will be enough.
Where it stops
It is a viewing setting in one app on one machine. AirDrop the file to your iPad and it is white. Open it in Acrobat and it is white. Email it to a colleague, print it, or read it in Books and it is white, because the document itself was never altered. It also needs macOS 26 \u2014 on anything older, Preview has no equivalent at all.
The older workaround, and why it is worse
Before macOS 26 the only route was System Settings \u2192 Accessibility \u2192 Display \u2192 Invert Colours. Classic Invert darkens the page and turns every photograph on your screen into a negative at the same time. Smart Invert is better and spares images, but both apply to the entire display rather than the document, and both stay on until you switch them off.
Changing the file instead
Converting rewrites the colours inside the PDF once, so the result is dark in Preview, in Safari, in the Files app on an iPhone, in Acrobat, and for whoever you send it to. Photographs keep their real colours, charts keep the colours their legend refers to, and scanned pages are cleaned up before conversion so scanner speckle does not become bright dust.
It stays a normal PDF
Text stays selectable and searchable, so Spotlight still finds the document by its contents. Links, bookmarks, page size and page count are untouched, and Quick Look renders it correctly.
Questions
Does Preview have a dark mode for PDFs?
On macOS 26 and later, yes — View then Use Dark Appearance for PDF. It recolours text and line art while largely leaving photographs alone. On earlier versions of macOS there is no equivalent in Preview.
Why is the PDF white again on my iPad?
Because Preview's setting changes what you see on that Mac, not the file. The PDF still contains its original colours, so every other device and app opens it bright.
Can Preview save or export a dark copy?
No. The dark appearance is applied while viewing and is not written into the file, which is why exporting or sending it produces a white document.
What about Invert Colours in Accessibility settings?
It works, but it applies to your whole screen rather than the document, and Classic Invert turns photographs into negatives. Smart Invert spares images but is still a display-wide setting that stays on until you turn it off.