Questions about Appearance settings in Big Sur

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Level 1

35 points

Questions about Appearance settings in Big Sur

I have two Macs, a 2018-era Mac Mini and a 2015-era MacBook Air. Catalina is running on the Mini but I installed Big Sur on the MacBook Air tonight. And one thing I immediately noticed I dislike about Big Sur is the appearance of the menu bar: all the words and icons are in white; this is true when Appearance settings are set to Light, Dark or Auto. In Catalina, I have the Appearance settings set to Light and the menubar is gray and the words and icons are black. Is there any way to get the menubar to look similar in Big Sur? I just find the white words and icons both distracting and more difficult to read. Thanks.

Posted on Nov 12, 2020 10:15 PM

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Answer 1

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Mirsky Author

Level 1

35 points

Nov 12, 2020 10:45 PM in response to dialabrain

I actually found a solution: The menubar works differently in Big Sur. It's affected by the Desktop image, which now bleeds into the menubar. If the Desktop image is dark, the words and icons in the menubar will be white. If the Desktop image is light, the words and icons in the menubar will be black. So I just switched to a different Desktop picture.

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Answer 2

dialabrain

Level 10

122,927 points

Nov 12, 2020 10:58 PM in response to Mirsky

Good work. Since all my Macs have very dark Desktop images and are in Dark Mode, I never noticed the issue with Light Mode and light images. My Macs running Big Sur, Catalina and Mojave all look the same.

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Answer 3

Mirsky Author

Level 1

35 points

Nov 12, 2020 11:42 PM in response to dialabrain

Haha, well, I apparently needed more specific instruction. After your suggestion, I went to Accessibility -> Display, but I thought the possible solution was to "Invert Colors," but I didn't like the results. I should have also tried "Reduce transparency", but it didn't occur to me to try it until Terence suggested it. But thanks too for your help. I just apparently needed more hand holding.

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