How to Enable Facebook Messenger Secret Dark Mode on Android
I’m a big fan of using “dark mode” or “night mode” on my phone whenever possible. In addition to being easier to watch in dark modes, they use less battery power as your phone doesn’t need power from that bright white screen.
At F8 last year, Facebook announced plans to roll out dark mode for Facebook Messenger on Android, and now it looks like the feature is available to everyone except the secret Easter egg-style mode, not the actual settings menu.
Enabling the mode happens in a slightly strange way: you need to send someone a lunar emoji, in particular a crescent moon.
Once you do, the screen will fill with falling crescent-shaped emojis, and a pop-up at the top of the screen will inform you that you have unlocked dark mode and will prompt you to go to the settings menu to turn it on (this will not be in the settings until you don’t do this whole crescent emoji thing).
When you enable this feature, you will also receive a warning that it is not yet complete and may not be available anywhere on Messenger at this time.
The good news is that you don’t actually need to send this crescent moon to a friend. I unlocked the mode by sending a message to the Facebook spam bot.
I just played with it for a day, but so far I haven’t come across any places where dark mode doesn’t work. While these spots clearly exist (or so the warning says so), you probably won’t see too many of them.