If you often spend evenings on the couch browsing your Apple TV’s menu or using the default apps a lot, the light appearance may not be pleasant to look at. During the day, the dark display of the Apple TV is less practical, because it makes it harder to read buttons and other settings. Fortunately, you can automatically set the display of the Apple TV from light to dark or choose a desired setting yourself.
- Set up
- Automatically
Adjust Apple TV display: dark or light
The dark display for the Apple TV can be found in the Settings app, on the Apple TV HD (formerly Apple TV 4) and newer. As soon as you set tvOS to dark here, the color of the menus immediately changes. In addition to the home screen, this affects all default apps on the Apple TV, causing them to appear darker. You can find the setting at the following location:
- On the Apple TV, open the Settings app.
- Choose General and navigate to Appearance.
- Press the touchpad of the Siri Remote and choose the light or dark display.
In most cases, the change will not affect third-party apps such as Netflix, Disney+ or Viaplay. These apps usually only have a dark display themselves. So you’ll mainly see the difference in Apple’s own apps, the home screen and the general interface of the Apple TV.
Apple TV automatically light or dark
Do you want the best of both worlds? Then that is also possible. You can set the Apple TV to automatically switch between light and dark. You’ll find this setting in the same place:
- On the Apple TV, open the Settings app.
- Choose General and navigate to Appearance.
- Choose the Automatic option.
The Apple TV is now on the dark view in the evening and at night and on the light view in the morning and during the day. Make sure the time on the Apple TV is always set correctly. The best way to do this is to have the time set automatically based on your time zone. You set this in Settings > General > Date and time. It is not possible to set a time schedule yourself. Around sunset the Apple TV switches to the dark display and around sunrise the Apple TV switches back to light.
Below you can see the difference between light and dark mode on the Apple TV home screen.
Do you also want to set a dark mode on the iPhone or iPad? Which can! You can choose always dark or light, automatically based on sunset and sunrise or according to your own time schedule. You can also adjust the display from light to dark in CarPlay.