Google Chrome's Secret Dark Mode for ALL Websites

I only just learned about this 🤯 Have you heard of it?

▼ Time Stamps: ▼
0:00 - Intro Details
0:56 - Creating the Shortcut
2:11 - An Additional Note on Flags
3:12 - Changing the Icon
3:30 - The Different Modes
4:24 - What They Do
4:33 - The Simple Modes
4:33 - Demo: Simple HSL
5:02 - Demo: Simple RGB
5:29 - Demo: Simple CIELAB
5:53 - The Selective Modes
6:27 - Demo: Selective Image Inversion
6:53 - Image Size Affects Inversion
7:56 - Demo: Selective Transparency Inversion
8:18 - Choosing a Mode

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[SkyyySi]

The point of image inversion isn't to make them dark per-se. It's because a black UI icon on a black background is poorly visible. That's why it has a size limit, and also why there's a separate mode for images with transparency - a small and partially transparent image is most likely a UI element.

[MigProPlayer]

One reason that I prefer this setting compared to Dark Reader, is that because this setting is native in the browser, it can also invert extension pages and internal pages and menus of the browser.
That helps a lot because I have some extensions that don't support dark mode.

[msh]

Been putting it on "enabled" for couple of years now, works great on most web-pages! Cant surf without it anymore really.. Amazing this still isn't an easy enable/disable option in every browser... Thanx for doing some research on it 👌

[tmpltw]

Joe's doing god tier work again! Thank you

[FengLengshun]

It's been there for ages, and the only real issue is that dark mode whitelisting is for some reason is still exclusive to phone. It performs better than Dark Reader too, so I would have switched to it had whitelisting is enabled on PCs.

[Jonathan-rmkt]

This is one of those things that I have suffered with for ages and finally googled, what a great solution! no extensions, concise directions, and room for more customization. Thanks man!

[jonnomonodesu]

Had it set to just enabled for over a year and was annoyed 'some' youtube thumbnails were inverted. Much better with simple HSL. Thanks.

[myndlogin]

I just use an extension called Dark Reader. Works pretty well and i can exclude websites as i'm on them, or turn the extension off. But neat to know it seems to be able to do it on it's own too.

[EarthrealmWarrior]

I've tried this but it doesn't work properly. Sometimes text is unreadable, there's no contrast between Text and Background. Is shouldn't be that hard since Firefox has a plugin called Dark Reader and it works pretty much perfectly

[migueldelgado]

Awesome video! Only I will clarify that based on my testing Default and Disabled are not exactly the same because Disabled is registered as a different action from Default, so it simplifies the process of changing the option if you prefer changing constantly instead of using a shortcut.

[wixlogo]

Btw there's an reply cool open source extension called "Dark Reader" it lets you change to black and white theme in just one click, and even lets you change saturation and contrast and stuff like that.

[TheMAZZTer]

I've used this a lot. Here are my notes.

1. Not sure if this has been fixed, but in older versions, turning this on would force all sites to render in light mode, and then it would invert them. This means sites that support dark mode will not render normally. Though to be fair the differences are hardly noticeable most of the time. I don't know if it is intentional or not. It could be done to avoid accidentally inverting dark sites by just inverting the light version instead.
2. Very confusing if you're a web developer and don't realize it is active on your pages. I set the color to white why is it black?!? This doesn't make any se... WAITAMINUTE.
3. Last I checked YouTube's background for the player controls turns white which is annoying and makes the text on it difficult to read.
4. Some sites just don't work well (at least with the default of Enabled) which is unfortunate. It tries its best, but it wants to avoid inverting photos and only invert images that are used to style a website. This is very difficult to do and it's not surprising it has problems. As you noted one of the factors used is the size of the image.

I used to use it for years but the problems eventually led me to turn it off, usually because it interfered with my web development efforts. This happened TWICE (see 2 above).

Also the "Default" option for flags means "Controlled by Google". Google often does A/B testing by enabling features for a group of users to see how it affects their experience. If it has the desired effect they may move on to a larger group and eventually enable it for everyone. This is a great way to test features that may not be feasible to test on many different system configurations or with a large number of users pressuring an online system at once. Of course, they do the best testing they can in-house before then, I'm sure.

This feature despite being in Chrome for years is probably not at that point though. I would expect upon enabling it a UI for temporarily disabling it or turning it on or of entirely and I don't think there is one. So it doesn't have that polish that would signal Google is ready to start wider deployment beyond flags.

Also the shortcut you made won't do anything if Chrome is already running. You might want to actually add that --restart flag in to force it to restart and apply the flags. Likewise the normal Chrome shortcut won't turn off the flags if Chrome is already running. This is easiest to accidentally run into if you keep Chrome running in the system tray when all windows are closed (because you have an extension that supports that.)

[leifmessinger]

HSL is hue, saturation, and luminance, so it naturally has the calculations to keep the colors (hue) the same while changing the luminance.

[BabyMayCry]

Thank God! Thanks Thio! You just saved my eyes from getting constantly blinded by the white background of the websites I frequently visit.

[cybernit]

Thanks I been scratching my head how to do this in google chrome, I even emailed google to ask how to do this, they didn't even give me this answer or way; they said in your OS set it which didn't work. Good job thanks again!!!

[Querxes]

Thanks for sharing!
Hope you're doing well Joe!

[Stiky_Piston]

Opera actually has it in the settings menu in the navigation bar by default, which is nice

[marc_frank]

i've been using selective inversion of non image elements
the simple hsl makes the google search page completely dark, while sionie leaves it a bit gray, which looks more pleasing to me
i still have some issues on really old websites where the background might be an image or something and then both text and background are light, so you can't read anything
if that happens i just select over the text or do ctrl+a so that the text gets a blue background

[RealDynamicDamien]

I may try this out, I already have an extension called Dark Reader that does all of that.

[BulletNG]

OMG THANK YOU!!!! I have been struggling with extensions for months now. I've tried a couple dozen extensions all of which barely worked, and the ones that do work, you have to pay for. THIS IS PERFECT!!!