Solace

Solace is a menu bar app that keeps your Mac in step with the world outside. It switches light and dark mode automatically, warms your screen in the evening, swaps your wallpaper to match, and can even turn dark when the weather does. It replaces f.lux, a wallpaper switcher, and constant manual toggling with one small app.

Any Mac running macOS 13 Ventura or later. Solace runs natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel, and the whole app weighs in at around 3 MB, so it is light on disk and on memory. It lives quietly in your menu bar and stays out of your way.

Open the downloaded file and drag Solace into the Applications folder shown next to it, then launch it from Applications. It appears in your menu bar as a small sun or moon icon. On first launch a short three-step welcome walks you through the two permissions Solace uses, then asks for the licence key from your purchase confirmation email. Enter it, click Activate License, and you are all set.

Solace is a menu bar app, so it deliberately stays out of your Dock and app switcher. Look at the top-right of your screen: a sun icon means light mode, a moon means dark mode. Click it to open the control panel, where everything lives: the mode switch, wallpapers, schedule, warmth, and weather. To quit, open the panel and use the Cmd Q control in the footer.

Two main ones. Location Services lets Solace work out your local sunrise and sunset, right on your Mac, so solar scheduling knows when to switch. Automation (controlling System Events) is how macOS lets any app flip dark mode, so you will see a system dialog the first time Solace switches: click OK. If you enable weather mode, Solace also asks to show notifications so it can tell you when a gloomy day activates dark mode. Location is optional and can be granted later from the Schedule section.

No. On a fresh install Solace respects whatever mode your Mac is already in. When the first natural transition arrives, a gentle prompt appears in the panel: "Switch to Dark Mode?" (or Light), with Switch and Keep Current buttons. Answer once and Solace switches automatically from then on. If automatic switching seems quiet on day one, open the panel; the prompt is probably waiting for you.

Open the Solace panel from the menu bar, click the small info button at the bottom-right, and turn on the Launch at Login switch. Solace registers itself with macOS the proper way, so you will also see it under System Settings, General, Login Items, and changing it in either place keeps both in sync. With it on, your Mac follows the day from the moment you log in.

Solace keeps itself current: it quietly checks for updates shortly after launch and every hour after that, and updates are free forever. To check on demand, open the panel, click the info button at the bottom-right, and choose Check for Updates. Your version number sits just under the Solace name in that same About panel. Every update is signed and verified before it installs, so what arrives is exactly what we shipped.

Solace follows the sun. It works out your local sunrise and sunset right on your Mac, recalculates them daily as the seasons change, and switches modes at each transition. Separate offsets let you shift sunrise and sunset independently by up to two hours, so dark mode can arrive a touch early or wait a while. Turn on weather mode and grey, overcast days go dark too. And you are always in charge: the mode card and the global keyboard shortcut toggle instantly from any app.

Of course. Click the big Light Mode / Dark Mode card at the top of the panel, or use the keyboard shortcut (Cmd Shift D by default), any time you like. Solace respects your choice and simply resumes at the next natural transition, sunrise or sunset. With weather mode on, a manual switch is remembered for the whole day, even through sleep or a restart, so a gloomy-day decision never overrides you.

Yes, and sunrise and sunset are adjusted independently. In the Schedule section, drag the sun or moon marker along the timeline to shift that transition by up to two hours either way, or click the time shown beneath it for quick presets: exact time, or 15 minutes, 30 minutes, and 1 hour before or after. Handy if you like dark mode to arrive a touch before dusk, or light mode to wait until you have had coffee.

Each morning, shortly after sunrise, Solace looks at the forecast average cloud cover across the daylight hours ahead. If it meets your sensitivity threshold, the whole day runs in dark mode; otherwise it stays light. One decision per day means no flickering between modes as clouds pass. When a gloomy day activates dark mode you get a notification with the cloud percentage and a Keep Light button if you would rather stay bright. Nights are always dark, whatever the weather.

Yes. The Weather section has three sensitivity levels: Cloudy triggers dark mode from 50% cloud cover, Overcast (the default) from 70%, and Gloomy only from 90%, so Gloomy means dark mode is saved for properly grey days. Hover over each button to see its threshold. Changing sensitivity re-evaluates today's decision straight away using the latest cloud data, so you see the effect immediately.

Yes, nothing is a black box. Open the panel, click the info button at the bottom-right, then Weather Decisions. You will see the last ten daily decisions: the cloud percentage, the threshold it was compared against, your sensitivity at the time, the outcome, and what triggered it. The Weather section itself also shows the day's averages for cloud, rain, and UV, and you can click the temperature to flip between Celsius and Fahrenheit.

Yes. Pick a light wallpaper and a dark one, and Solace swaps them the moment your Mac changes mode. Your light wallpaper greets you each morning, and your desktop follows the sky at sunset with no prompt and no interruption. It works across all your displays at once, so multi-monitor setups stay perfectly in sync.

Yes. Evening Warmth gently eases your screen from cool daylight (6500K) down to warm candlelight (1900K), on its own schedule or all the time. The transition is gradual, so there are no jarring shifts, and it resets automatically at sunrise. You can leave Night Shift on: Solace pauses it while warmth is active and restores it afterwards, and a Compatibility Mode brings warmth to the newest MacBook Pros.

You choose. The "Starts at" badge in the Warmth section offers three options: a fixed time (from 3:00 PM to midnight in half-hour steps; 8:00 PM is the default), Sunset (it follows your local sunset, including any offset you have set), or Always for round-the-clock warmth. Warmth eases in gradually over about 15 minutes rather than snapping, and returns to neutral at sunrise. Drag the slider any time to preview a warmth level instantly.

No, leave Night Shift exactly as it is. While Evening Warmth is active, Solace pauses Night Shift so the two never fight over your screen, and keeps re-asserting your chosen warmth if macOS tries to interfere. When warmth ends, or you quit Solace, your original Night Shift setting is restored exactly as you had it. On the newest MacBook Pros, Compatibility Mode goes one step further and delivers warmth through Night Shift itself.

Yes. The default is Cmd Shift D, which toggles light and dark from any app. To change it, open the Solace panel and click the shortcut shown in the footer; it switches to "Press keys...", and whatever combination you press next becomes the new shortcut, saved instantly. Press Escape to cancel recording. If a combination will not register, another app has probably claimed it, so pick a different one.

Solace is a one-time $4.99. No subscription, no in-app purchases, and every future update is included free, with no upsells. Buy it once and it is yours forever, and it is backed by the same 14-day money-back guarantee as every THEODORE HQ app.

You can download the latest version any time from theodorehq.com/solace/download.html. Install it, launch it, and enter the licence key from your purchase confirmation email. After that, Solace keeps itself up to date automatically in the background. Cannot find your key? Check the confirmation email from Polar, our checkout partner, or email support and we will help.

Your licence key activates Solace on up to 3 Macs, so your desktop and laptop are both covered. If you ever hit the limit or need to move to a new machine, email support@theodorehq.com and we will sort it out.

Usually there is nothing to move: your key works on up to 3 Macs, so install Solace on the new machine, enter the same key, and click Activate License. If you see "Activation Limit Reached", it means all 3 slots are in use; email support@theodorehq.com and we will free up the old machine's slot for you, typically within a day. Your key is in the purchase confirmation email from Polar, our checkout partner.

No account needed, ever. Once activated, your key is kept in the macOS Keychain, the same encrypted store your Mac uses for passwords, so it stays put across restarts and updates. You can confirm your status any time via the info button in the panel footer: a green Licensed dot means all is well. Do keep your purchase confirmation email from Polar as a backup copy of the key, in case you ever set up a new Mac.

Yes. Everything core runs on your Mac: switching, scheduling, wallpapers, and warmth all work offline. Solace verifies its licence quietly in the background and is happy to go up to 7 days between checks, so a flight or a week off-grid is no problem. After 7 days fully offline it asks for a brief connection to reconfirm the key, then the clock resets. Weather mode and update checks naturally need the internet when they run.

Yes. Solace comes with a 14-day money-back guarantee: only keep it if you love it. Just email us within 14 days for a full refund. No forms, no hoops, no friction, and a real person, not a bot, replies within a day.

Nearly always a copying slip. Open your purchase confirmation email from Polar and copy-paste the whole key rather than typing it; it starts with SOLACE- followed by blocks of letters and numbers. Solace tidies up stray spaces and lowercase letters for you, but a missing character will read as invalid. If you get a network error instead, check your connection and try again. Still stuck, or can't find the email? Write to support@theodorehq.com and we will look up your purchase.

Three quick checks. First, open the Solace panel: on a new install, Solace politely asks before its very first switch, so answer the "Switch to Dark Mode?" prompt if it is waiting. Second, the Automation permission: go to System Settings, Privacy & Security, Automation, and make sure Solace is allowed to control System Events; Solace also shows an alert with an Open Settings button whenever this is the blocker. Third, for solar scheduling, check the Schedule section shows your sunrise and sunset times, which need Location Services.

Solar times are calculated from your location, right on your Mac. If they look off, the usual cause is location: Macs need Wi-Fi turned on to find where they are. Solace tells you exactly why location is not working, with steps to fix it, so open the menu bar panel and follow the message there. Once location resolves, times recalculate immediately.

Solace points at your chosen image files where they live, so if a file is moved, renamed, or deleted, that pairing stops. Solace tells you with a "Wallpaper Not Found" note naming the file; open the Wallpapers section and pick the image again to fix it in seconds. Files in iCloud Drive, Google Drive, or Dropbox get special care: if they have not downloaded yet after a restart, Solace fetches them and retries on its own. Tip: keep wallpapers somewhere permanent, like your Pictures folder.

That is weather mode doing its job: this morning's forecast crossed your cloud threshold, so the day runs dark. Easy to undo. Click Keep Light on the notification, or tap the mode card at the top of the panel; your choice then holds for the rest of the day. To make it happen less often, set sensitivity to Gloomy in the Weather section (dark only from 90% cloud cover), or switch weather mode off entirely. Curious what triggered it? The info button, then Weather Decisions, shows the exact numbers.

Weather needs your location, so start there: if the panel says "Location not available", make sure Wi-Fi is on (Macs locate themselves via Wi-Fi) and follow the guidance in the Schedule section; weather refreshes automatically the moment location resolves. If you see "Weather unavailable - please try again later", Apple's weather service is having a brief moment; Solace retries every hour on its own, or flip the Weather toggle off and on to refresh immediately. Your last daily decision stays in effect meanwhile, so nothing flickers.

The usual cause is another app holding the same combination; macOS gives a global shortcut to whichever app claimed it first. Open the Solace panel, click the shortcut in the footer, and record a different combination; it registers immediately, so you can test it straight away. If Solace shows an Accessibility alert instead, click Open Settings and allow Solace under Privacy & Security, Accessibility, then record the shortcut again.

A macOS quirk on the newest MacBook Pros blocks the usual warming method, and Solace has a built-in answer: Compatibility Mode, which delivers the same warmth through a different route. On affected Macs, Solace shows a "Use Compatibility Mode" prompt right in the Warmth section the moment you use warmth; one click and you are done. You can also flip it manually any time via the small gear icon in the Warmth section header. Your slider level and schedule stay exactly as they were.

Email support@theodorehq.com. A real person, not a bot, reads every message and usually replies within a day. Whether it is a question, a bug report, or an idea for Solace, we would love to hear from you. You can also report a bug, request a feature, leave a testimonial, or follow the roadmap right here on the Support Centre, and Solace links straight to it from the Support section of its About panel.

Completely. Solace collects nothing about you: no account, no tracking, no analytics. Your location never leaves your Mac, and solar times are calculated locally on your device. If you enable weather mode, Solace checks Apple's WeatherKit for the forecast, and that is it. None of your data is ever sent to us.

Three things only. A periodic licence check with Polar, our checkout partner, which needs a connection about once a week at most. Apple's WeatherKit, but only if you switch weather mode on. And a quiet check of our website for app updates. That is the complete list: no analytics, no tracking, no crash reporters, and nothing about you or your usage is ever sent to us. Turn weather mode off and Solace touches the internet even less.

Location is used for exactly one calculation: your local sunrise and sunset times, worked out on your Mac so solar scheduling and weather mode know your daylight hours. It is optional; you can skip it during setup and grant it later from the Schedule section. Without it, solar and weather scheduling pause, but everything else works: manual switching, the keyboard shortcut, wallpaper pairs, and Evening Warmth at a fixed start time. Your coordinates never touch our servers.