> Rally Help Center. Index of every page: https://rallywith.ai/help/llms.txt
> This chapter's pages: https://rallywith.ai/help/settings-and-shortcuts/llms.txt

# Light, dark and your own colour

> Choose light or dark, pick your personal colour, and give Rally a new icon in the Dock.

Rally has three settings that change how it looks. Two of them are about this
Mac: whether the app is light or dark, and which icon sits in your Dock. The
third, your personal colour, belongs to you and travels with your account.

## Light or dark

Open **Settings → Application** and find the heading **Appearance** ("Make
Rally feel at home on this Mac"). The **Appearance** control has three choices:

| Choice | What it does |
| --- | --- |
| **System** | Follows the appearance this Mac is set to. This is the default. |
| **Light** | Stays light, whatever this Mac is set to. |
| **Dark** | Stays dark, whatever this Mac is set to. |

Hover over a choice to see that description as a tooltip. The line underneath
confirms what you picked: "Following this Mac, which is light right now." for
System, or "Always light." or "Always dark." for the other two.

The change happens at once, in every Rally window you have open, including
Settings itself.

### System follows the Mac all day

**System** is not a third look. It always comes out as light or dark, whichever
your Mac is using at that moment. If you have set macOS to switch between light
and dark automatically through the day (in the Mac's own **System Settings →
Appearance**), Rally switches with it. Choose **System** once and you never have
to think about it again, which is the best kind of setting.

### There are no other themes

If you are looking for a theme picker with names like "Ocean" or "Midnight",
this is it. Rally has one look, drawn in a light version and a dark version. The
Settings search knows this too: type "theme" and it takes you to
**Appearance**. If you used an early version of Rally that offered more, your
old choice has been turned into the matching light or dark setting.

> [!NOTE]
> Appearance is saved on this Mac only. If you use Rally on a second computer,
> set it there as well.

## Your personal colour

Your colour is separate from Appearance and works in both light and dark. You
picked one when you set up your profile in the
[guided setup](https://rallywith.ai/help/getting-started/guided-setup.md), and you can change it
any time in **Settings → Account**, on the **Color** row ("Your avatar and
personal accent color"). Click a swatch; the chosen one gets a tick.

There are eight: rose, orange, lime, emerald, blue, violet, fuchsia and black.

Your colour does two jobs:

- **It is how teammates spot you.** Your avatar wears it everywhere your name
  appears.
- **It tints your copy of Rally.** Your own message bubbles and the accents on
  controls, such as links, checkboxes and highlights, take on your colour. When
  Rally asks you a question with options, hovering an answer shows a light wash
  of it too.

The effect is deliberately gentle. Lists, selected rows and hover highlights stay
a neutral grey, so the app does not turn entirely fuchsia on you, however much
you might want it to.

Your colour is stored on your account, so it follows you to every computer you
sign in on.

> [!NOTE]
> If you chose a colour a while ago, you may have had teal, green, amber or
> slate. Those have been retired. Rally shows them as the nearest current colour
> (emerald, emerald, orange and black), and they can no longer be picked.

## The app icon

Rally comes with seven icons for the Dock, Finder, Launchpad and Spotlight. Find
them under **Settings → Application → App icon**:

- **Light**
- **Dark**
- **Calm**
- **Ludicrous speed**
- **Homage**
- **Builder**
- **Quiet**

Click one and it bounces to say it has been picked. The Dock changes straight
away. Ludicrous speed does not make Rally any faster, but it does make the Dock
look like it is about to.

Out of the box, Rally chooses for you: the **Light** icon when your Mac is in
light mode and **Dark** in dark mode. The line under the icons says so, for
example "Using light automatically with the system appearance."

Picking an icon fixes it, whatever the Mac's appearance. To go back to the
automatic behaviour, click **Use the system icon**, which appears under the
icons once you have chosen one.

> [!TIP]
> If you run Rally on more than one Mac, giving each a different icon is an easy
> way to tell, in a screen share, which one you are looking at.

The icon picker is a Mac feature. Anywhere else, the section says "Custom app
icons are available in the macOS app."