Here we are, five years after macOS Mojave introduced appearances, and some apps are still dithering about how best to handle Dark Mode. Serious Rich Text editors like Nisus Writer Pro rightly give the user choices, but not Apple’s TextEdit (or Pages). If you’re already in Dark Mode, TextEdit allows you the option to Use Dark Background for Windows, but it doesn’t let you do that when in Light Mode.

What’s odd about this is that, from the introduction of Dark and Light appearances, Apple has had a way of making RTF documents work equally well when viewed in either mode. It’s essential for developers who put styled text into an NSTextView, and need to have confidence that it will display properly whether it’s in Dark or Light mode. It’s also important for anyone whose RTF documents are intended to be optimised for display rather than print.

Shortly after the release of Mojave I decided the only solution was to write my own Rich Text editor that did work properly with the new appearance modes, and on 9 October 2018 released its first tentative version here. Since then, many of those who need to work with Rich Text that displays well in both appearance modes have used it. It has also gained some more unusual features, such as creating interlinear text, although it’s still confined to working with text and not embedded images, and won’t open RTFD files.

Recently, Laurent drew attention to a longstanding shortcoming in DelightEd: it always opened in Normal, bi-modal, appearance mode, and did the same for all documents when they were first opened. I have changed this in a new version of DelightEd, which now saves mode preferences for you.

DelightEd has two appearance settings: one sets the mode for the app as a whole, and the other sets it for each individual document. I decided that saving them both would become confusing, and could cause unexpected behaviour. So the mode that is automatically saved in the app’s preferences is the global mode for the app as a whole. That in turn determines the default appearance for newly created documents, and those opened from files.

So if you want DelightEd to change its appearance mode in accordance with that in your Mac’s Appearance settings, set the app’s mode to Normal. When you then open a document, it too will default to Normal behaviour, and display in sync with the Mac’s appearance mode. If you want appearance fixed in Dark mode, set that as the app’s mode, and all new and opened documents will start in Dark mode too.

DelightEd version 2.2 is now available from here: DelightEd22
from Downloads above, from its Product Page, and via its auto-update mechanism. This new version should work on all Macs running High Sierra or later, including Sonoma.

Thanks to Laurent for asking for what should have been obvious to me five years ago. Maybe Apple might like to have a rethink about TextEdit and Pages some day.