Be it my laptop or my phone, I personally am a dark mode lover. And I am sure, just like me, some of you would also have that extra bias for dark mode?. From laptops/PC to smartphones, majority devices are shipped with software that offers system-wide dark mode theme compatibility these days.
But when it comes to some the most frequently used applications such as internet browser, dark mode wasn’t supported until recently. Among the major players, Apple brought the change in Safari with macOS Mojave v10.14.4 and Google did the same for Chrome on macOS.
About a month later, dark mode landed on Windows 10 (with the April update bearing bulid number 74.0.3729.108). But soon after the release, a Google employee took to the official help forums to confirm the update is available only to a limited number of Chrome M74 users.
I can confirm that we are rolling out this feature to a small number of Chrome M74 users now, and that it will become more widely available in the near future.
While users who didn’t get a hand on dark mode were sad to hear about limited roll out, those who received it began chiming about download bar unreadable issue due to improper color combination after Chrome 73/74 update. So PiunikaWeb immediately highlighted the concern.
Here’s glimpse of what the problem looks like:
Moving on, as is usually the case, it’s totally a matter of choice as to what changes users find experience enhancing and eye pleasing. Same is the case with dark mode on Chrome. While some appreciate it, a lot of Mac and Windows users did not like the background change much.
In fact, a huge number of users who didn’t like the background change after receiving the update have been routing to different social media platforms inquiring and looking for ways to revert it back.
Multiple threads have been posted over the past few days across the official Google Chrome Help forums with hundreds of users asking for ways to restore the default settings. Here’s what some of the complainants have to say:
Recently, My chrome browser just switched to black/dark mode. Idk if it was an update, but I really hate it. And I can’t find any option to go back to the original theme. I tried everything. Only option I have left now is to download and use that blue theme on the web store which is still not the one that I want.
Why the hell is Google forcing these themes on users. Just give me back my original chrome theme.
I’m using dark theme of Mac OS Mojave and like many other apps, I’ve just got chrome’s dark theme. But I didn’t find it appealing so I wanna move back to default white theme of chrome even while using Mojave dark theme. I tried finding but didn’t get the option to turn off that dark theme on google chrome.
Similar reports can be seen posted across micro-blogging site Twitter. Here are some for you to take a quick glance:
While users are really confused, and looking for a way back, a Google product expert informed one of the the complainants on Twitter that dark mode can’t be disabled through Chrome as it’s a system setting. Here’s what they said:
Chrome doesn’t offer the option to disable dark mode, as this is a system setting.
That means, this being a change that’s implemented at OS level, one can’t disable it through Chrome settings. Another product expert said something similar while informing users about the change across the company’s official help forum.
This is controlled by the light/dark default app mode setting in Windows settings and there isn’t a separate Chrome setting.
Here’s their complete statement:
What Windows 10 users can do
Of course one ways is to disable Windows 10 dark mode at system level, something which you can do using the following steps:
- Right Click On Windows Desktop
- Go To Personalize
- In the Menu on left hand side, select Colors> Choose your color
- Reset the default color to ‘Light’
However, if you want to disable Google Chrome dark mode while maintaining your Windows OS’ dark theme, you can use the following workaround.
- Create a new Chrome shortcut on desktop and change the shortcut icon’s on-click command to
C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --disable-features=DarkMode
What Mac users can do
On the other hand, Mac users can change dark mode by running the following command in terminal.
defaults write com.google.Chrome NSRequiresAquaSystemAppearance -bool YES
So if you are among the ones who don’t like dark mode on Google Chrome after the recent updates, hope the workarounds shared here help you resolve the issue. Give it a try and let us know how it goes.
PiunikaWeb is a unique initiative that mainly focuses on investigative journalism. This means we do a lot of hard work to come up with news stories that are either ‘exclusive,’ ‘breaking,’ or ‘curated’ in nature. Perhaps that’s the reason our work has been picked by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and more. Do take a tour of our website to get a feel of our work. And if you like what we do, stay connected with us on Twitter (@PiunikaWeb) and other social media channels to receive timely updates on stories we publish.
Dr. Aparajita Sharma
1227 Posts
Currently, I am pursuing Ph.D (Psychology), and have been teaching the same for past four years. Coming to PiunikaWeb, I know it was a complete switch over, but the idea was appealing enough to put in all the effort it called for. My work primarily involves research. Oh, and yes, some of the photographs you see here are clicked by me. Overall, I am enjoying whatever I am doing, and hoping you’ll also feel the same reading all my articles. You can find me on LinkedIN.
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