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Pumpkin Lights is a nifty little menu bar app for Mac that lets you quickly toggle between light mode and dark mode with a ray-traced jack-o-lantern descending from the top of the screen. It’s completely free and a lot of fun to use.
Highlights
If you remember the Festivas menu bar app of the year Mac, Pumpkin Lights is very similar in concept.
Pumpkin Lights brings a jack-o-lantern to your menu bar, just in time for Halloween. It’s a beautiful decoration and there are many different ways to personalize it. You can “grow” many different pumpkin designs, as well as choose from four different color variations.
When you click on the pumpkin or pull it, your Mac will switch between light and dark modes, at least by default. Pumpkin Lights also has the ability to open an app/website, keep your Mac awake, mute a sound, run a command, or run a shortcut of your choice.
The jack-o-lantern has proper physics, so you can actually throw it around a bit and move it in a new way. You can customize the rope it hangs from and much more. There is also an option to have a hanging bulb that serves a similar purpose.
The story
Why pumpkin lights? Here’s what the developer has to say:
The idea came from something most of us do every day without thinking about it: switching between Light and Dark modes. It’s always a toggle buried in Control Center or System Settings, and it never feels like anything. I wanted it to feel like touching a real object. So instead of a flat icon, the pumpkin and light bulb are actual 3D models, ray traced in real time, hanging from strings that you can swing and spin. When the candle is lit, its glow passes through the sculpted face. I spent most of my time on little details like the way the strings move and the way the light falls on the pumpkin, because I wanted it to still be delicious the hundredth time you use it, not just the first.
Download the application
Pumpkin Lights is a completely free utility. You can download it from the developer’s website here, and it’s available for any Mac running macOS 14 Sonoma or later. You can also follow the developer on Twitter.
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