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How to change the accent colour of a macOS app in SwiftUI?

question swiftui macos
Ram Patra Published on June 7, 2025

To change the accent color of a SwiftUI macOS app, you can do it in any of the following ways:

1. Set Global Accent Color in the .xcassets (I prefer this personally)

  1. Open Assets.xcassets
  2. Click +New Color Set
  3. Name it AccentColor
  4. Set its Appearances to None (or configure Light/Dark if needed)
  5. Choose a color (e.g., orange)
  6. Ensure your Info.plist has the key AccentColorName pointing to AccentColor (usually done automatically but sometimes you will have to manually add it)

This will apply app-wide unless overridden locally.

2. Set .accentColor in your SwiftUI view

This will apply to the specific view hierarchy:

@main
struct MyApp: App {
    var body: some Scene {
        WindowGroup {
            ContentView()
                .accentColor(.orange) // Change to your desired color
        }
    }
}

3. Use tint(_:) in SwiftUI 3+ (macOS 12+)

For more recent APIs, Apple recommends using .tint(_:):

ContentView()
    .tint(.orange)

Manually modify Info.plist

Ensure your Info.plist has:

<key>NSAccentColorName</key>
<string>AccentColor</string>

Bonus: Dynamically change accent color

If you want to let users choose or switch themes dynamically:

@AppStorage("accentColorName") var accentColorName: String = "blue"

var accentColor: Color {
    switch accentColorName {
    case "orange": return .orange
    case "green": return .green
    default: return .blue
    }
}

var body: some View {
    ContentView()
        .tint(accentColor)
}
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Ram Patra Published on June 7, 2025
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