Welcome to TNW Basics for tips, guides and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps and other content.
Ah, Dark Mode – a charcoal gray color palette associated with night time and eyeball saving. It’s not without its obstructions, not even among my own colleagues. But there are a lot of people, including me, who can’t get enough of the dusty color theme. Luckily Dark Mode is available on almost every device and app – so we’ll walk you through how to make your digital life a little darker.
Note that we are going to show you how to enable Dark Mode on many essential applications and services – there is not enough time or space to show how to enable Dark Mode on servers, as it is very ubiquitous. Theme. But this would make a good starting point.
Social media
Most social media apps have added dark mode to make late night browsing easier. Facebook, of all the sites, is one of the last to arrive. Just added Dark Mode with the latest design, which you can read here. The Dark Mode Toggle is in the main drop-down menu of the site. While Instagram doesn’t have a dark mode option in the app, it syncs with your phone’s dark mode – you can read about how it works here.
Twitter has a similar setting with Instagram, in which you can sync its color with system color settings – meaning that if your phone is already in dark mode, it will automatically go dark. You can manually set it to Dark Mode by going to Settings, and finding the Dark Mode toggle under “Display and Sound”. You can read more about the options here.
Messenger originally had Dark Mode by Emoji based Easter Eggs only, but it later actually joined Bandwagon. To turn on the dark mode, all you have to do is tap your profile picture and tug the top of the options. You can read more about it here.
Workplace applications
It’s not just social media that wants to protect your eyes. Many of your favorite workplace applications have also added dark mode settings, so your work computer can also look as dry as a fireplace. For starters, Slack now has Dark Mode available on its iOS and Android apps (which you can read about here) as well as on its desktop .p client (which you can read about here).
WhatsApp has added Dark Mode to its web and mobile versions, though at various times. You can read about how to enable Dark Mode on the web client and here on Android. Like the other apps mentioned here, WhatsApp will automatically go into dark mode on iOS when iOS itself is set to dark mode.
Google has also added dark mode to its disks, sheets and slides on Android, which you can read abstract here. Also, it’s not a workspace app per second, but Google Play also has Dark Mode – to turn it on, you just need to go to the app settings and find the theme menu. You can read about it here.
Operating system
Like all of the above, various operating operating systems for phones offer you dark modes to turn on at night to make browsing your eyes or work easier. Apple Play added Dark Mode to iOS 13, and as mentioned, turning it on will kick most apps into Dark Mode if it’s available. You can read about how to turn it on here. Similarly, Android introduced the Dark theme in the Android 10 update, which you can find in the display settings.
If you want a little variation, Windows 10 also has a light mode in addition to the dark – you can find both in the personalization settings. You can read more about it here.
And that’s it! While this won’t necessarily make your whole life a bs bsidian paradise, it will at least put a dark mode on all your favorite apps. Good luck!
