RetroMac BlogGame Boy DMG & amber terminal themes on Mac
Two of the coziest retro looks you can put on a modern Mac: a Game Boy DMG green tint for handheld pixel art, and an amber phosphor terminal for late-night coding sessions. Both take about a minute to set up with RetroMac.
The Game Boy DMG look
The original Game Boy screen was reflective, low-contrast and famously pea-green. Recreating that on a modern OLED is a matter of dropping saturation, remapping the palette to four greens, and adding a soft dot pattern.
RetroMac's "Game Boy DMG" preset does all three at once, and can be scoped to just your emulator window so the rest of macOS stays untouched.
The amber phosphor terminal
Amber monochrome monitors were the calmer cousin of green phosphor CRTs. On modern Macs, pair RetroMac's Amber Phosphor CRT shader with an amber iTerm2 or Ghostty color scheme and scope the shader to just the terminal window.
Related: see the full CRT effect guide for scanline and mask tuning.
Setup steps
- Install RetroMac from myretromac.app/download.
- Open Effects → pick "Game Boy DMG" for the handheld tint.
- Scope it to your emulator with per-app rules.
- For the terminal look, pick "Amber Phosphor" and scope to your terminal window.
- Load an amber color scheme in iTerm2 or Ghostty for warm text.
Try RetroMac yourself
Free · macOS 14+ · No account, no telemetry
FAQ
Can I limit the Game Boy tint to one app?
Yes - RetroMac lets you scope shaders per-app so only your emulator (or one window) gets the DMG look.
Does the amber terminal work in iTerm2?
Yes. Use an amber color scheme in iTerm2 and scope the RetroMac CRT shader to just that window.
Is Game Boy Color supported too?
Yes - a 'GBC' variant is bundled alongside the classic DMG green preset.
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