Chrome can be easily switched into dark mode, giving you an experience that’s far easier on the eyes for those late-night Google searches. What’s more, Chrome can even force websites with a light theme to display inverted colours, giving you a dark background and light-coloured text.
If you’re looking to conserve battery life on your mobile or just reduce the glare from your desktop monitor, here’s how to enable it.
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How to enable dark mode for Chrome on Windows
- Enter the Windows Settings menu, click Personalisation then Colours and scroll down to the switch marked Choose your colour, or on Windows 11, Choose your mode
- Changing this to Dark enables dark mode on all apps with native support, including Chrome
However, this will only affect the browser’s interface and menus. If you want to change the appearance of web content, in effect forcing light-coloured web pages to show a dark background and white text, follow these steps
How to force dark mode for Chrome web content
- Enter the following address in your URL bar: chrome://flags/#enable-force-dark
- This will bring up a hidden Chrome settings menu and the Force Dark Mode option
- Go to the drop-down menu next to Force Dark Mode and select Enabled
- At the bottom, hit the Relaunch button to restart your browser
Note: In Step 3 above, you’ll see several options in the drop-down menu; they all work similarly, simply switching up the colour combinations. You can test them all if you want. It boils down to your personal preference.
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How to enable dark mode for Chrome on macOS
- Open System Preferences choose General and then Appearance
- Click on the Dark option. Similar to Windows, all apps with a native dark mode will switch over
How to enable dark mode for Chrome on Android
Dark mode on Android is enabled in much the same way as web content on the desktop. It’s still an experimental feature, so some design elements might look slightly off.
- Navigate to chrome://flags in the Chrome address bar
- Hit the Search flags box and enter the word ‘dark’. Here you will be presented with two options: Auto Dark Mode for Web Contents and Darken websites checkbox in themes setting
- If you choose option one, you can select from multiple inversion options, just like you can with the desktop app
- Option two will add a setting that you can toggle on and off within the settings menu
- Choose which method you’d prefer and then relaunch Chrome to see the effects
How to enable dark mode for Chrome on iOS
Since the launch of iOS 13, Apple has offered a dark mode option for the whole operating system on both iPhone and iPad. Selecting this option will automatically switch Chrome into dark mode too.
- Go to your Settings, then to Display and enable Dark Mode
- When you next open Chrome, it should reflect these changes