How to enable dark mode for Google Chrome

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Google Chrome has had a built-in dark theme like Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Edge since Chrome 74. You can even apply a dark theme to every web page you visit using third-party themes or an extension. That is how.

Chrome now offers a dark mode built into Windows 10, Windows 11, and macOS. It even obscures all context menus in Chrome.

How to enable Chrome dark mode in Windows 11

Google Chrome’s built-in dark theme also respects your system theme in Windows 11.

Open the Settings app by typing “Color Settings” in the Start menu and pressing Enter, or by clicking “Open.”

Alternatively, you can open the Settings app and navigate to Personalization > Color.

Click the dropdown menu to the right of “Choose your mode” and select “Dark.”

Then close the Settings app and launch Google Chrome. Unless you have manually set the Chrome theme, it will match your system settings.

How to enable Chrome dark mode in Windows 10

Google Chrome got a dark theme built into Windows in Chrome 74. To enable Chrome’s dark theme, simply switch your operating system to dark mode.

In Windows 10, go to Settings > Personalization > Colors and select “Dark” under “Choose your default app mode”. On a Mac, enable dark mode system-wide.

Enabling system-wide dark app mode in Windows 10

Here’s how to turn on Chrome’s new dark mode if you prefer to use dark mode in Chrome and light mode in the rest of Windows 10. That article also includes instructions for adjusting the color of Chrome’s window title bars.

RELATED: How to enable Google Chrome dark mode in Windows 10

How to enable Chrome dark mode on macOS

Dark mode for Google Chrome became available on macOS in Chrome 73. As with Windows, Chrome on macOS will respect the current system theme.

To change the system theme, first open System Preferences. (You can open it by clicking the Apple menu in the bar at the top of the screen and selecting “System Preferences”).

Click the “General” icon in the System Preferences window, and then click “Dark” to the right of Appearance.

You can also type “dark” in the search bar at the top right to find this option.

Bonus: apply a dark theme

Chrome supports user-created themes, which you can download from the Chrome Web Store. To give Chrome a dark interface, all you have to do is install a dark theme. Google even provides a handy collection of editor-curated dark themes. This will give your Chrome browser a dark mode on Windows 7, Linux, Chrome OS, and any operating system without a native dark theme available.

To update: Google now offers some official Chrome browser themes, including a “Just Black” dark mode theme. You may want to give it a try.

We recommend Morpheon Dark, which is the most popular dark theme in the Store. Unlike other dark themes, it provides a decent amount of contrast between the active tab, which is a bit lighter, and the inactive tabs, which are darker.

This theme darkens the tab bar, title bar, toolbar and New Tab page. That’s all you can theme in Chrome. You can’t obscure Chrome context menus or the Settings page, for example.

The Google home page with the Morpheus Dark theme.

If you ever want to go back to the default Chrome theme, you can; click menu > Settings. Look for the Themes option under the appearance and then click on “Restore Defaults”.

Bonus: install a dark mode extension

Warning: By their very nature, browser extensions present a potential security risk. You should use as little as possible.

A theme changes the interface of your browser, but most websites use white backgrounds. Sure, you can enable dark mode on Gmail and a few other websites individually, but that only works for one website at a time.

To get a dark mode for the entire web, install the Dark Reader extension from the Chrome Web Store. Some other browser extensions work similarly, but we like Dark Reader the best of all the dark mode extensions we’ve tried.

This extension automatically applies a dark style to every web page you visit, and you can click the Dark Reader button on your toolbar to adjust it. You can also disable dark mode for a website from here. The extension even allows you to set sites to never open in dark mode, which is useful if Dark Reader isn’t working well with a website.

The Dark Reader settings menu.

Unfortunately, Chrome’s settings pages will always be light unless you enable your system’s dark theme. Extensions cannot manipulate them for security reasons. Chrome’s context menus are provided by the operating system, so you can’t obscure them with an extension either.

RELATED: How to enable dark mode in Windows 10

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