Google Chrome

Chrome Canary 77 tweaks dark mode on web pages, no longer inverts image colors

Damien Wilde | Jul 16 2019 - 5:26 am PT

We’re seeing dark mode everywhere in our apps and OSes but one area we haven’t seen much of a switch is on the web. Now thanks to a few recent Chrome beta updates, we’re seeing an improved native dark mode.

Back in Chrome 74, a flag was added to theme many parts of the app UI, including menus and backdrops. It wasn’t perfect and regularly caused bugs on many websites. You could end up with certain text invisible and images might end up looking particularly odd.

The latest current release, Chrome 75 still allows you to enable this darker theme but, of course, it still has issues with color inversion of images and even embedded videos.

Thanks to the Chrome Canary 77 update (via @TotalSecurily), we now have an improved dark mode that enhances the entire experience and no longer inverts images colors. You can see from the before and after images below just how that affects our own site. Swapping the weird negative-style image color effect for the actual image posted.

: Chrome 75 stable

: Chrome Canary 77

Google appears to be serious about making all of its apps compatible with dark modes or dark themes. With Chrome being installed on almost all Android devices right out of the box, it makes sense to offer a dark mode for the world’s most popular browser.

If you want to use a dark theme on your version of Chrome (74 or later), enter chrome://flags into your address bar and search for “Android Chrome UI dark mode” and select enable. For changes to take effect you will need to restart your browser but your eyes will be very grateful for it. Keep in mind the image color fixes are only in the Chrome 77 Canary build for now.