Appearance control panel

The Appearance control panel appeared as of Mac OS 8.0.

Mac OS 8.0 Appearance Control Panel
The Mac OS 8.0 Appearance control panel, which stood through Mac OS 8.1, allowed the user to do only basic things, for example, choose the different color accents. It did not allow the user to choose different themes. Desktop pictures had to be managed in a separate control panel.

Color
The top button, Color, controlled the accent color and the highlight color of the Mac OS. User could choose from a variety of existing accent colors, and they could also choose an existing highlight color or create a color of their own choosing (if it was not available on the pop-up menu).

Options
The bottom button, Options, allowed the user to enable or disable collapsing windows and its sounds. This, in essence, was the WindowShade switch in Mac OS 8.

The other option in Options was Appearances -- this enabled the user to choose a default system font (Charcoal, Chicago and Sand - Sand was not a default option and had to be installed by some "hacking"). There was also an option to enable or disable (after a restart) the 'System-wide platinum appearance. This was the only time the new Platinum interface was optional; as of Mac OS 8.5, it was a fact of life for Mac users.

Mac OS 8.5 Appearance Control Panel
The Mac OS 8.5 Appearance control panel, which persisted through Mac OS 9.2.2, allowed you to choose different themes (skins) for your Macintosh. It also integrated other control panels previously separate, such as the Desktop Pictures control panel.