Web contents dark mode on Google Chrome for Android

Despite the ongoing efforts on the implementation of manual/dynamic dark mode web wide, it’s realization is still very far from expressive. At the same time, what can look like a simple change in the stylesheets, may become a tedius task that spans throughtout the code. To also avoid half baked solutions what sometimes look broken visually, sometimes requires adapting previous formated content, but that is not always a feasible ideia depending on the scale. Taking this into consideration, its not hard throw it to the someday/lesser priority bin, if ain’t broke why mess with the innards? It’s just a visual preference right? Well, above that we can add the commonly forgotten energy savings on OLED screens, specially relevant to smartphone users.

Fortunatly there is a hack present in Chrome for Android, that flips bright backgrounds and darker font colors. It’s not perfect naturally, but considering the small number of native implementations it can become a real battery/eye saver that works for every site across the web.

To flip the switch just enable the Chrome flag below:

chrome://flags/#enable-android-web-contents-dark-mode

That’s it!