Want Dark Mode on Google Chrome, Outlook? Here’s How It Works

Dark mode not only saves battery on the phone, but also gives a more appealing look to many apps.

Dark Mode on YouTube is available for all devices. 

(Photo: The Quint)

Google has stated that use of all apps in dark mode could be the secret recipe for a longer battery life of your phone.

Standing by its word, it has updated YouTube to support the dark theme, which can be manually changed on mobile and web as well. But before Android Q (hopefully) brings dark mode as a native feature for mobile, there are a few other apps that could use the dark treatment.

We’re talking about Google Chrome, the popular web browser and Microsoft’s Outlook mailing client among others. Here’s how you can switch them to dark mode on mobile/web right away.

Dark Mode for Outlook

Open the Microsoft Outlook mailing client on mobile/desktop or web. On the desktop app, head over to File > Options.

The Outlook app on Windows supports the dark theme.(Photo: Outlook screen grab)

Doing that will take you into a small dialog box with a lot of features. Over there, click on General, where you will see Office Theme and then select Black is your mode.

You can choose between white, black and grey.(Photo: Outlook screen grab)

For those using the web version, ie Office 365 for Outlook, they will see the Settings icon at the top right. Click on that, and you’ll see the Switch to dark mode option, select that and your Outlook interface will turn into black colour.

Dark mode on Outlook via Office 365.(Photo: Outlook screen grab)

Dark Mode on Google Chrome

Various reports are saying that Google Chrome version 73 on Mac OS is getting native support for dark mode. We’ve tried that but didn’t have any luck with it. The option for Chrome on Windows 10, most likely will roll out in the coming weeks.

This is what the dark mode feature does to Chrome.(Photo: Google Chrome screen grab)

Until then, you can head over to Google Chrome’s app store and choose from a slew of Chrome extensions that offer dark mode as a feature. You can deselect dark mode for few web pages by right clicking on the page and excluding it from the dark mode.

The tech giant reportedly acknowledged its mistake of encouraging app developers to use the colour white for their applications, including its own apps.

YouTube already supports dark mode on all devices, while WhatsApp and Facebook will be getting their mode options in the coming months as well. If you are using Whatsapp Web, at the moment it doesn’t work with dark mode.

We’re also hopeful that the dark mode, missing from the Android Q beta does make its way to the upcoming beta releases.