Enable dark mode on chrome's internal pages

Question

I have dark mode working on chrome's internal pages in Windows 10. Is it not implemented in the Ubuntu version?

I'm using chrome version 75.0. My theme is Adwaita-dark.

Solution 1

On my system, I have the dark mode active:

I need to do two things:

• launch the browser using google-chrome-stable --enable-features=WebUIDarkMode --force-dark-mode and
• set the browser to use the Classic option rather than GTK+ as shown in the image below. Doing so makes the choice your GTK theme irrelevant:

Use Classic, not GTK+ in chrome://settings/?search=themes

---

Unfortunately, not all internal pages are themed. Opening many of the urls in chrome://chrome-urls/ will confirm that. It's not clear if or when they'll ever get round to that!

Solution 2

Note: as of chrome Version 78.0.3904.87 (Official Build) (64-bit) you can easliy turn chrome's internal pages to dark mode,its under chrome flags by default

• run chrome://flags in the url
• search for dark and you should see this option Force Dark Mode for Web Contents just enable it and relaunch chrome.

this is how it looks

for those who don't have the above option under flags To enable dark mode on Ubuntu, you need to edit the google-chrome.desktop file.

If you use GNOME desktop, simply run the command below which opens up the required file in editable format. If not, open the file in a text editor of your choice

sudo -H gedit /usr/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop

All you have to do is search for two lines and add a dark mode flag in front of them.

1. Search for

   Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable %U
   

   and replace it with:

   Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable %U --force-dark-mode
   

2. Search for

   Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable
   

   and add the dark mode flag after it like this:

   Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable --force-dark-mode
   

Once you have done these changes, simply try restarting chrome. If that doesn't work, rebooting your Ubuntu system should do the job.

For me rebooting my Ubuntu 18.04 system worked. Also note that if you update the chrome app, the changes will be gone, since the file will be overwritten.

Solution 3

Just paste

chrome://flags 

in the search bar, and in the opened page, search for 'dark' and find

Force Dark Mode for Web Contents

Enable this thing, and you're done.
Now you've got the dark mode.

Solution 4

I made a script for it, just run:

bash -c "$(curl -fsSL "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/felipecassiors/dotfiles/master/scripts/enable_chrome_dark_mode.sh")"

Output:

We will:
  - Create the file '/home/felipesantos/.local/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop'

Do you confirm? (Yy)y

All done.
Please make sure you fully close Google Chrome before opening a new instance.

To uninstall, run:
  $ rm -f /home/felipesantos/.local/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop

It currently uses the method described by DK Bose's answer, but I might change in the future if it stops working. Basically, it:

1. Copies Chrome's system shortcut to the user shortcut
2. Edits the options on the executable for you

There is no need to change Chrome's theme in my tests tough.

Solution 5

I would highly recommend installing Dark Reader which intelligently scans the CSS of the page to keep background dark and adjust foreground colors accordingly. Here is a snippet showing dark reader in action

Original

Dark reader

View more solutions

Comments

[lamino]

Finally.. Thanks!

[Remco Haszing]

Instead of modifying /usr/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop, the file can be copied into ~/.local/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop and modified without root access. This file will take precedence over the global desktop file.

[Jeanba]

Why downvoting this post? Is there something against Dark reader chrome extension?

[NeuroXc]

This is not the system dark mode, this only emulates dark mode by inverting colors of web pages. It can break readability of some websites.

[Iluvathar]

@Jeanba for one, extensions can't modify internal and protected pages, so Chromium settings pages will remain light.

[Iluvathar]

That's simple ugly inversion, not real dark mode.

[Timo]

Works on Lubuntu 20_04. The font is now different than before and less readable. But I am happy because I heard that this mode is fair better for my eyes.

[ManuelSchneid3r]

Can I change this at runtime?

[soroosh]

This solution also works for chromium-browser.

[somebody]

note also that while this "intelligently scans pages", it's not intelligent to detect when a page is already dark, making the majority of dark themes provided by the sites themselves useless

[Siddhesh Rane]

@somebody not true. You might have had issue with one or two sites. But the vast majority of sites that provide dark themes are rendered fine. It keeps them dark and legible. Thats what matters.

[somebody]

@SiddheshRane that's not what matters to me, what matters is that it doesn't ruin the carefully crafted themes of sites already on dark theme, which is literally trivial to do

[hashlash]

I use GTK+ and it still works (using --enable-features=WebUIDarkMode --force-dark-mode flags)

[Admin]

Thanks, it works very well!