Finding the best wallpaper to match the dark mode on your Mac or iPhone is no easy task. Simply using “black pictures” isn’t enough, the perfect fit needs to look good while the whole OS is also dim. Check our selection below and you’ll surely find something that does just that the exact way you want.
Best Dark Mode Wallpapers for Mac
On Mac, screens are usually LCD, even if they have very good contrast and black rendition. They also need to look great in a horizontal setting, so not any wallpaper will do.
1. City Lights Bokeh
As someone with astigmatism, I’m usually not very fond of bright light spots alongside dark backgrounds. They give me, well, that astigmatism effect. That’s terrible because I also love cityscapes, which, at night, are precisely a lot of bright spots over dark backgrounds.
The solution? Blur! This bokeh image keeps things recognizable enough as city lights, but aren’t too strong to hurt sensitive eyes.
2. Red Betta Fish
Siamese fighting fishes, commonly known as betta fishes, are nothing short of glamourous. Even the species’ scientific name, Betta splendens, admits this. They’re also ferocious, being best kept isolated from each other unless it’s mating season, but I digress.
This wallpaper not only shows a red betta fish in all its splendor, but it also has a significant empty space. That allows you to organize your Desktop icons to provide a great weight balance between wallpaper and interface elements.
3. M82 Galaxy
You know macOS goes well with astronomy photos because Apple itself used to ship these as stock wallpapers. Between versions 10.5 (Leopard) and 10.8 (Mountain Lion), the then-called OS X displayed space-themed background pictures by default.
The ones in Leopard and Snow Leopard (10.6) weren’t actual photos, but CGI representations of an “aurora” instead. Lion (10.7) used an image of the Andromeda galaxy, while Mountain Lion’s photo was of the NGC 3190 galaxy.
Here, I bring you an image of the Cigar galaxy, NGC 3034. It’s a composite of photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and processed by astrophotographer Harshwardhan Pathak.
Best Dark Mode Wallpapers for iPhone
iPhone wallpapers have a few criteria to meet as well. Firstly, OLED screens display deeper blacks and have higher contrast, so not everything looks as good in one of these. Also, the image won’t coexist with windowed apps, but with icons and widgets instead. Lastly, there’s the portrait orientation, which may further limit available options.
1. “Fine Tip on Black Surface”
Judging by what the photographer named this image, you wouldn’t really know what is portrayed in it. Look closely, and you’ll see an airplane. The lines are trails of smoke, from the engine’s regular operation. They eventually fade into the black background of a night sky.
2. Gray Tiles
Originally, this wallpaper had a landscape orientation. However, using it in a vertical position makes much more sense. Whether to position the tile path all the way through the screen, or only halfway through, is up to you.
3. City Behind a Chain Link Fence
I said I like cityscapes. At that distance, the lights aren’t so blinding, and the chain link fence adds a poetic tone to this photo. The cloudy sky only makes it even better.
Were you expecting something more somber? If you’re on an iPhone, check our selection of goth and black wallpapers, then! For a broader selection, we have a list of the best iPhone and Mac wallpapers for both light and dark modes.