Once you go dark, you can never go back. Not when your eyes are thanking you for it, and your optician agrees that dark mode is better for your general health.
If you have been paying attention to tech development within the major OS space, you must have noticed that dark mode is now a trend. Windows 10 (obviously, Windows 11 too) has it, and Apple inculcated it into its macOS, starting with Mojave, Catalina, and now the Big Sur.
It is not that these companies want to appear fancy, but it is a move to address eye and general body health concerns. Computer users working in dark rooms or working late into the night do experience eye strain, leading to health complications over time. This eye strain comes from all the constant white light shining into their eyes.
Electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, monitors, and TV sets are today’s most notorious sources of white light. For most people, avoiding too much TV time is more manageable than, say, avoiding spending too much time on your computer or smartphone. Often, we need these computers and smartphones for our work, study, or communication.
Dark Mode in Chrome Browser
The popular browsers (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera, and Safari) have also adopted dark mode. Although the system’s OS can make virtually all parts of the operating system appear dark. Browsers can only make their interfaces dark; they have no control over the website you are visiting. Or don’t they?
It turns out Google Chrome has a clever trick up its sleeve that, for some reason, Google chose to keep a secret. Get this; Chrome can arm-twist a good number of websites into appearing in the dark mode.
Yes, that is right! Chrome could make websites that don’t appear in dark mode do so even if their developers had not put in that function.
PS – Having a website appear in the two modes – the normal mode and dark mode – is one of the latest and currently trending web design standards.
So if you are visiting a website that does not have a dark mode design, you can have Chrome render it in the dark mode. Your eyes and general health will thank you for it.
Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, Forms in Dark Mode
If you work a lot on Google’s Office suite, you must have realized that they enabled dark mode in the mobile version of the Office. However, Google didn’t bring the feature to the desktop version of the Office. That is funny since most of the ‘heavy lifting’ takes place on computers, not smartphones or tablets.
So if you want to have dark mode across all websites, you visit using Chrome and even the desktop version of Google Office suite. Then, launch the Chrome browser on your laptop or desktop computer and make sure you are running the latest version. Then type the following into the address bar:
chrome://flags/#enable-force-dark
As mentioned above, Google does not make it obvious to everyone that Chrome can force most websites on the internet to appear in the dark mode. As you can see in the screenshot above, Google has disabled the feature by default. Suppose you spend a lot of time on your computer as you browse the internet using Chrome; dark mode is a feature you want to enable.
Other Benefits of the Dark Mode
Health reasons aside, some argue that the dark mode looks cool on your screen. It appears like some coders screen with lines of code running across a black background. Also, reducing all the white light will give your battery a few extra minutes in between recharge. If those are not reasons enough to adopt dark mode, you don’t love your eyes.
However, you might want to know that Chrome is forcing these websites to appear in dark mode. Most of the sites don’t have a dark mode design, so some will appear better than others, while others will completely resist. The sites that resist may arise as a complete eyesore.
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