Google Chrome’s dark mode is coming to desktops
Dark mode lovers, rejoice. Google is working on a dark mode for desktop versions of both its browsers but also the ChromeOS operating system.
It will be similar to the dark mode you can activate for use on the Android version of Chrome, and 9to5Google is now reporting that the feature will soon be available cross-platform.
The feature has been available on Android for a few months now, by enabling a flag in the browser. This flag, Chrome-speak for an experimental browser feature, used to just work for Android but has been replaced by a flag that will now work across all platforms.
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The Android version is experimental, and it’s still got a little bit of jank to it. Some websites and controls have usability issues when the colours and changed. This is expected to be resolved with the release of Android Q, which is expected to launch in the next few weeks. When this launches, Android Q will contain a system-level dark mode by default, so they should have worked out the kinks by then.
Google will be offering up five different dark modes to choose from when the commit is finished, although that hasn’t yet happened.
The modes are:
- simple HSL-based inversion
- simple CIELAB-based inversion
- selective image inversion
- selective inversion of non-image elements
- selective inversion of everything
If you want to have a play around with Google Chrome’s new features, you’ll need Chrome Canary, the experimental version of Chrome that gets updated pretty much every day. However, it’s still early days for the feature, which will likely amble its way across to Chrome’s full release when it’s fully fleshed out.