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Invert the system's color polarity System
I discovered this weird trick while I was playing the demo for Giants:Citizen Kabuto. I was too lazy to read the key map for the game so I started experimenting, and suddenly the screen colors became inverted. I thought at first that the colors were only in the game, but when I quit the game, my desktop's colors were inverted also. I found the cause this to be a "com.Apple.CoreGraphics.plist".

If you want to play with this wierd glitch, create a preference file named "com.Apple.CoreGraphics.plist". Name the child "DisplayUseInvertedPolarity". Set the type to Boolean and the value to "yes". To get Aqua back to normal just change the value to "no". It gives a different look to all your applications. For some reason any screenshots I've taken with Grab.app look normal, so you can't exactly show this off very well without trying it yourself.

[Editor's note: At first, I thought this was just the "Inverted screen" effect from the Universal Access preferences panel, but it's not. Things are still in color, but they're all the polar opposite of their original colors. It's quite the interesting effect, and none of the screen capture tools will reflect the image. So I tried with a digital camera; here's a small snippet of an inverted polarity screen:


If you'd like to try this out yourself, the easiest way to create the file is to open a Terminal window and type:
  defaults write com.apple.CoreGraphics \
DisplayUseInvertedPolarity -bool YES
The backslash should allow you to copy and paste the above in one step, but in case it fails, it needs to be on one line. You'll have to logout and login to see the effect. To disable it, you can repeat the above with "NO" at the end, or just delete the com.apple.CoreGraphics.plist file in ~/Library -> Preferences.]
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Invert the system's color polarity | 20 comments | Create New Account
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Not a weird glitch
Authored by: werikblack on Dec 05, '02 09:35:25AM

Apple has allowed a lot of control over the user interface (albeit many times hidden). This isn't a weird glitch, it's a functionality. My Universal Access preference pane switches to exactly the colors shown in the document above.



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You can do the same thing in system-preferences
Authored by: eckbert on Dec 05, '02 09:42:05AM

Go accessability options there you can switch the display to white on black.



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You can do the same thing in system-preferences
Authored by: Chris Haynes on Dec 05, '02 09:55:44AM

This is NOT the same thing. This changes the POLARITY of the colours. It doesn't change the display to greyscale (as the Universal Access prefs pane does)...

Interestingly enough, if you view Rob's digicam pic while you're in this inverse polarity mode, you can see the original colours ;)



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You can do the same thing in system-preferences
Authored by: wolfy on Dec 05, '02 10:08:03AM

Actually, I think you can get the same effect by using the accessibility feature, then going to System Preferences/Displays and setting the number of colors to Millions. It's no longer black & white, but inverse color polarity.



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You can do the same thing in system-preferences
Authored by: alajuela on Dec 05, '02 11:06:27AM

es, it is the same effect. And Rob's digital cam snippet looks like normal Aqua when inverted.



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You can do the same thing in system-preferences
Authored by: jokke on Dec 08, '02 07:59:43PM

Go to Universal Access, set display to grayscale, set it to white on black, then turn off grayscale again. Now the screen will be in full color but inverted. I don't know the shortcut for Grayscale....

I noticed this 'bug' about two months ago but found it so useless I didn't think of posting it anywhere.



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You can do the same thing in system-preferences
Authored by: farleybug on Dec 08, '02 09:17:43PM

I tried your trick, but I can't get it to work. I changed the screen into greyscale, and then changed it to white on black, but then the greyscale option is no longer available. Can anyone help?



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quickkey
Authored by: virga42 on Dec 05, '02 09:59:22AM

You can accomplish this by mashing ctrl-option-cmd-8 on your keyboard. It is an accessibility feature. Reading white text on a black background helps some who have trouble seeing.



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No, you can't...
Authored by: robg on Dec 05, '02 10:08:16AM
I thought so myself at first as well, but it's NOT the same thing. White on black is monochrome. This is full color, just reversed polarity color. So white does become black, but red doesn't become black, etc.

Try it out if you don't believe me -- first invoke Universal Access, memorize the look, then try this hack. They are very different.

-rob.

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Yes, you can...
Authored by: Malleus on Dec 05, '02 02:26:57PM

If you go to Universal Access and change it to black on white, at first it is just in greyscale. However, if you then go to the Displays system pref and change the colors to thousands or millians (but not 256), the colors will be in reveresed polarity.

I think I can file this under the "This doesn't seem remotely useful, but it is still a sweet trick" group.



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Try Black Light instead ...
Authored by: Anonymous on Dec 05, '02 10:21:35AM
You may just instead want to use Black Light — it can do this inversion as well as a lot more, and no mucking about with the defaults for CoreGraphics is necessary.

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Both are right
Authored by: dzurn on Dec 05, '02 12:35:07PM

The White-on-Black option in Universal Access seems to
have changed functionality since I first tried it several
months ago.

I'm running 10.2.2 now and the "White on Black" option
REALLY DOES reverse the polarity of the screen. It also
sets it to 256 colors instead of thousands or millions
on my CRT monitor. Looking at the digicam shot in the
hint shows it to be back to its correct color.

Months ago the White-on-black feature switched to a
negative greyscale, not negative full-color. That seems
to be the big difference in what people are reporting.

Try Cmd-Opt-Control-8 and see what happens. I don't know
if flat-panel LCD displays would work differently.



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Both are right
Authored by: bq on Dec 05, '02 12:58:37PM

This works the same on my laptop, so i would assume it's independent of the veiwing device. Makes sense really -- how and why would the OS know to treat a CRT differently from an LCD?

What i don't get is, why use 256 colors to "improve" visibility?



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Both are right
Authored by: mahakk on Dec 06, '02 02:47:53AM

on my lombard, if i press cmd-option-ctrl-8, the screen gets black and white. no funky colors. only black... and white.
strange.
and i'm in 16 mio mode...



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Why results might be different
Authored by: dzurn on Dec 06, '02 01:55:11PM
Apple just released a Tech Note with this line:
You see a negative image in the screen. Depending on system configuration, it may be black and white, such as that in Figure 1, or color negative, such as that in Figure 2.
docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107329

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Try this
Authored by: enderai on Dec 11, '02 07:45:25PM

I was fooling around and found this out. Invert the screen using the universal access shortcut, and then change the color settings (I used the monitor menu extra, if it makes a difference.) On my screen I get millions of colors inverted. Sweet!



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Inverted Snapshots
Authored by: Durandal on Dec 05, '02 02:31:36PM

If you want to see what your screen would look like with inverted colors, take a snapshot and use Photoshop or Graphic Converter to invert the colors.



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wow
Authored by: pascalpp on Dec 05, '02 02:33:41PM

would this qualify as a new Aqua theme? it sure looks as ugly as some of the Enligntenment themes i've seen on Linux boxen. better watch out, Steve might yank this 'feature'.

i love the white drop shadows!



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Once and For All...
Authored by: mustang_dvs on Dec 06, '02 12:10:23AM

To get inverted Colors: press [CMD]-[OPT]-[CTRL]-8, then, using the Monitors menu extra or Preference Pane, select Thousands or Millions and Voila! inverted Aqua colors.

This works in OS X 10.2.2 and any other copy of OS X with the "Universal Access" preference pane.

By enabling this, text is much harder to read and windows are generally more difficult to discern. But it looks cool, and that, apparently is all that matters, right Bullwinkle?

BTW, this is something that has been a "feature" of the OS since way back when System 7 introduced color.



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Once and For All...
Authored by: ChaChi on Dec 06, '02 10:15:37AM
This works in OS X 10.2.2 and any other copy of OS X with the "Universal Access" preference pane.
FYI, OSX 10.1.5 has the "Universal Access" preference pane and pressing [CMD]-[OPT]-[CTRL]-8 and switching from thousands to millions of colors (or the other way around) does absolutely nothing! Doing the "defaults write" trick does work after about 2 logins (sometimes just one).

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