Auto Dark Mode for the web might finally be coming to Chrome

If you are anything like me, blinding white websites that sear your eyeballs in low light are the worst, right? Though it’s been an on-again, off-again proposition over the past few years, Google might finally be bringing auto dark mode back to the Chrome browser.

This experimental feature allows you to automatically transform any website into a dark theme, regardless of whether or not the web developer has put the necessary elements in place or not. Currently stuck behind a feature flag, this trick has returned to once again work across Windows, Mac, Linux, and ChromeOS. For the moment, Chrome on Android and iOS are both unsupported, but hopefully they will follow suit as this feature actually rolls out in the future.

Messing with this hidden feature for a few minutes this afternoon (I saw the return of auto dark mode via Tom’s Guide), I’m impressed. When Google attempted this a few years back, it was just OK. Some of the dark color changes didn’t work and it made certain web services unusable. From what I can tell this time around, Google’s algorithms for determining what needs to be darkened and what needs to be recolored have vastly improved. Even Google’s own services like Gemini, Gmail and Drive look great with this feature enabled, showcasing deep blacks and charcoal grays to make sure none of the UI is lost in dark mode.

How to test out Chrome’s new auto dark mode

Like many of Chrome’s upcoming features, you’ll need to unlock this one through the use of Chrome flags. Simply search for “Dark Mode Web Contents” and you’ll find it. Flip it on, restart Chrome, and you’ll be off and running.

So far, this isn’t perfect and there’s no switch to turn it on or off in Chrome’s UI. This is more of a test situation for now, but since the flag for this feature disappeared for quite some time, we’re mainly excited that Google seems to be thinking about fully implementing it in a future update. With a simple button up in the top bar of Chrome, it would be amazing to basically have a one-stop shop to enable dark mode for all web contents in the future.

For now, however, we can only turn on this flag, try things out, and wait. I like dark mode in the right settings, but nowhere near enough to keep it on all the time. In my opinion, this needs to follow your theme settings when it arrives, forcing dark mode for the web when the rest of your system is in dark mode. For me, that’s sun down to sun up, and I’d love to eventually see this dark mode for web content follow along with the rest of my phone and Chromebook while it’s dark outside.