• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, January 3, 2019

Google apps such as Android Messages, YouTube, News, Maps and Contact all have a built-in native dark mode that turns the background a grayish black with light-colored text and images to support viewing on the screen at night.

The Chrome dark mode setting was initially rolled out to Chrome on macOS in late 2018. Now the feature will become available for Windows 10.

Peter Kasting, a Google software engineer, took to Reddit to confirm that the company will release a dark mode for Chrome on desktop after a software engineering student in Silicon Valley with visual stress, which can cause sore eyes and headaches, asked about the change.

While the desktop will help people with this disorder, the student also wanted to know about mobile viewing.

Mobile is the area where this really matters because people cannot use browser add-ons on the phone, the software engineering student wrote, explaining that the invert mode in the OS inverts everything including images.

To give an idea of what dark mode looks like, Chrome’s incognito mode has a grayish-black background with white text.

Dark Mode is one example of an app add-on, which Kasting suggested using until Google releases its version for Chrome. The browser add-on helps turn the browser screen to dark at night time. The toolbar button serves as an on and off switch.

The media site Techdows reports that installing Google Chrome Canary now supports the use of the dark mode for Windows 10. The site reported in May 2018 that Kasting submitted a bug report that referred to the absence of a dark mode for Google Chrome.