The first signs of Dark/Light mode finally arrive in Chrome OS Canary

Nearly two years in the making, the much-discussed and highly-anticipated Dark/Light Mode has finally made it officially arrived in the latest version of Chrome OS Canary. 9to5Google’s resident genius Kyle Bradshaw recently got the new Dark Mode flag enabled through some tinkering with the Chrome OS crosh shell but a recent updated to Chrome OS Canary has finally added the feature flag and despite its unfinished look, the new theme picker is functional.

I say “unfinished” because it is clear the “Dark/Light mode of system UI” as the flag is titled, still has some serious styling work to be done. Dark mode seems to be working fairly well but the light theme appears to still be lacking in the area of the app launcher. You can see in the images below what the system tray will look like with the themes applied. Dark mode doesn’t look much, if at all different than the current system UI of Chrome OS while the light theme takes on an off-white, slightly opaque look.

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To complement the upcoming dark/light UI, Chrome OS will soon add a new set of wallpapers under the name “Elements.” These are currently hidden behind the flag chrome://flags/#use-wallpaper-staging-url and include a dark and light version of each background to math the selected OS theme.

While I’m sure that developers will take their time to ensure this new feature is primed and polished before pushing it to the Stable channel, the fact that it has finally made it to the Canary channel is a good indicator that Google is pushing to get this wrapped up sooner than later. Chrome OS is rapidly becoming a well-known platform among consumers and having a full dark/light mode option is something many users will be happy to see when it finally arrives. We’ll keep track of the new theme feature and let you know when it starts rolling up the ladder so that you can try it out yourself.