People have been opting for the dark mode across their operating systems and on websites for years now. It’s kind of cultish, really, with its die-hard advocates. I kind of like dark mode, but one thing that I found problematic is that many sites use bright colors. So, while you might be enjoying your dark mode tranquility, the next second, you open a website and get blinded by all the bright colors.
Thankfully, Google Chrome has a hidden option to force all websites you visit to use dark mode. It can cause a few visibility issues, but, for the most part, it works very well. All you have to do is enable a Chrome flag and restart your browser.
Some of you will have used the Dark Reader extension, which is great but doesn’t work on Chrome for Android because Google doesn’t allow extensions there (Edge for mobile supports certain extensions). With the flag technique, however, you can enable dark mode on all the mobile websites you visit in Chrome for Android, too.
- To get started, go to the URL bar in Chrome on your desktop or mobile device, type chrome://flags/, and hit enter.
- Next, in the Search flags field, type ‘dark,’ and you will see Auto Dark Mode for Web Contents – this should be available on Windows, Mac, Linux, ChromeOS, and Android, but not iOS.
- Click the associated drop down that says Default and choose Enabled, you will then be prompted to restart your browser. Upon restart, go to a website that doesn’t have a dark mode. If it’s enabled properly, this website should have a dark theme.
As stated at the beginning of the guide, this is a bit of a hack on Google’s side, so not all websites will adjust perfectly. For most websites, though, you shouldn’t have any issues. If you find deal-breaking changes, you can go back to the Chrome flags and change the drop-down back to Default to undo the change or select another variant of the flag.
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