100 Tips #46: Invert Your Mac’s Display Colors

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Here’s a fun one. Whatever you’re doing on your Mac, from any application or any document, try hitting all these buttons together: Control+Option+Command+8.

Bam! Your screen colors are inverted. Don’t worry, you haven’t broken anything, and this isn’t a bug. It’s a feature.

To switch things back, hit the same key combination again: Control+Option+Command+8. The same command toggles this feature on and off.

The inverted colors feature is one of the accessibility tools that are built into OS X (to see more of them, go to System Preferences and click on Universal Access).

This particular one can be useful for everyone, not just for those with vision impairments. I use the invert controls very often, particularly when I’m reading a long article with black text on a white background. Rather than fiddle with the settings in my browser or document editor to change the colors there, I’ll often just hit the invert command to make the task a little easier on my middle-aged eyes.

(You’re reading the 46th post in our series, 100 Essential Mac Tips And Tricks For Windows Switchers. These posts explain to OS X beginners some of the most basic and fundamental concepts of using a Mac. Find out more, or Grab the RSS feed.)

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