Google Chrome Getting a Native Dark Mode in Windows 10

Google’s Chrome browser could be getting support for a native dark mode in Windows. The company has been planning to add a dark mode for Chrome on Windows 10 for a few months, and first signs of the new dark theme have appeared on the latest versions of Chrome Canary.

Chrome technically already has a dark mode within the incognito mode, though you can’t enable the same dark mode for the regular browser. Going forward, though, Chromium developers want to respect Windows 10 users’ settings and automatically enable Chrome’s upcoming dark mode when they have the dark theme in Windows 10 enabled.

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

As 9to5Mac reports, the latest versions of Chrome Canary has a dark mode that you can enable by adding “–force-dark-mode” to the target on the Chrome Canary app shortcut from the Properties window in Windows 10. Once that’s done, running the browser will automatically disable the new dark mode in Chrome.

The only problem is that the dark mode isn’t anywhere near polished. The browser tab and address bar have a decent UI, but everything else is a little broken — and that includes the profile menu, the main menu, and the settings. The feature will obviously improve over the next couple of weeks and possibly months before the UI is fully polished and ready for all users, so that’s not something you should worry about right now.

It’s worth noting that the feature does work on older versions of Windows as well, so Google might offer an option to manually select between the light and dark modes from within Chrome instead of simply following the users’ Windows 10 settings.

Tagged with

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Conversation 5 comments

  • dontbe evil

    03 January, 2019 - 8:52 am

    <p>chrome? no thanks</p><p><br></p><p>LOL no rush</p>

  • Trickyd

    03 January, 2019 - 9:08 am

    <p>They've taken their time on this – Firefox has had dark mode support for ages – one of the reasons I switched back to it from Chrome last year.</p>

    • ReformedCtrlZ

      Premium Member
      03 January, 2019 - 10:07 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#390210">In reply to Trickyd:</a></em></blockquote><p>It'll be nice to see a native dark theme from Google, but you've been able to use third party dark themes since… forever… So I've always just gone with that :)</p>

  • UbelhorJ

    Premium Member
    03 January, 2019 - 10:31 am

    <p>I wanted dark more years ago and installed the MKBHD theme. I've been using it for so long, I'd almost forgotten it's not just what Chrome looks like. </p>

  • dontbe evil

    04 January, 2019 - 12:35 am

    <p>too little too late … I'd nver use spychrome anyway</p>

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC