How to enable Google Chrome Dark Mode or Dark Theme?

Enable Google Chrome Dark mode in Desktop/Android

In Google Chrome, Dark Mode is not an explicit option. It is burried in advanced options.

You can tweak advanced options in Chrome ‘flags’ as explained below to activate dark mode.

1. Google Chrome for Desktop – Enable dark mode

1. Open Chrome browser.
2. Browse page ‘chrome://flags/‘
3. Search for text ‘Dark’.
4. Select option ‘Force Dark Mode for Web Contents’
5. Choose ‘Enabled with selective inversion of non-image elements’
6. Click Ok

Now, Chrome will ask permission to Relaunch in both Desktop & Android devices. Because the settings will be applied only if you close & reopen the Chrome.

Once Chrome is relaunched, you can see that all the text elements will have black background with white texts. There is no chrome plugin or extension is involved in this method.

2. Google Chrome for Android  – Activate Dark Theme

To enable dark mode in chrome browser for your android phone, Open Chrome in your android phone & follow these steps.

1. Goto Settings – Right hand side top of chrome browser.
2. Choose ‘Theme’.
3. Select ‘Dark’.
4. Click back to exit for settings.

This is supposed to be a official method to enable dark mode in Chrome. But this option will not enable complete dark mode for all the pages.

In addition to this options, you can try the option explained in the previous section as well, that can turn all pages into Dark background with bright text colors.

Impact of Dark mode in Chrome

Text with colors other than black will have their default colors inverted. This means that it will have a color that you will be able to differentiate from normal white text.

Note: Remember not to change any other Flags in this page accidentally. This would result in crashing Chrome & you might end up reinstalling the browser.

Other than this change from white to dark theme, there will be no change to font style or size. All other font settings will be shown as it is.

If you would like the video or images also be inverted to its opposite color. Then you have other list of options as well.

• Enabled
• Enabled with simple HSL-based inversion
• Enabled with simple CIELAB-based inversion
• Enabled with simple RGB-based inversion
• Enabled with selective image inversion
• Enabled with selective inversion of non-image elements
• Enabled with selective inversion of everything
• Disabled

You can choose one of these options that suits your needs.

Dark mode for Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter etc.,

The famous social media services like FB, Whatsapp, Twitter will be displayed in dark mode.

It does have a different feel to see these familiar pages with Light-on-Dark theme. I am not sure for how long, but I am loving the new look very much for now. Even right now, I am typing this article with this option enabled. I feel like I am writing it on a black paper. The black screen matches with my laptop’s monitor color. You might feel like I am exaggerating, but it really feel amazing.

Though few of the websites & services are providing a choice for the users to use dark mode with separate theme, this inbuilt chrome option can also be used.

There is no concrete scientific evidence that this dark mode reduces the harmful effects to human eyes. There are debatable pros and cons to this black and white inversion technique.

Additiona references:

1. Google page official page explaining about the Dark mode in its browsers.