Set Your Apps to Dark Mode When You Take Your Phone to Sleep
Reading your phone in bed ruins your sleep schedule. But if you, like me, do it anyway, learn to do it without feeling like staring at the sun (or annoying your sleeping partner) by turning on “dark mode” in every app that offers it.
App-specific dark modes differ from Night Shift on iOS and Night Mode on Android , which reduce brightness and blue light. In dark mode, the background and foreground colors are swapped and white text appears on black. While Android also has a dark theme , there isn’t a pretty way to darken every app’s interface at once. iOS and Android offer an inverted mode, but this turns the entire interface into a nightmare palette of photo negatives.
Luckily, some of the apps that keep you awake at night offer a dark mode that’s pleasant enough to use around the clock. Here’s how to find dark mode in the most popular mobile apps.
In your profile, open the settings and select “Turn on night mode”. Twitter posted a demo GIF if you need help.
Tweetbot
In your profile, select the gear icon and then Display. Scroll down. In the “Theme” section, select “Night”.
There is no night mode for the full-featured app, but in the settings menu, go to Chats> Chat wallpaper> Solid colors and scroll down to see a dark gray background.
Instapaper
Instapaper Dark Mode also lowers the brightness of images. In any article, click the “Aa” button and choose the darkest of the four color options. Or turn on Auto Dark Mode in the settings menu to switch modes at sunset.
Overcast weather
In the settings menu, switch “Dark theme”.
Google Maps
Dark mode is also useful for less distracting driving. Navigation mode turns off automatically at night, but you can turn on night mode in Navigation Settings> Color Scheme.
Triplets
Adding night mode to this addictive mobile game is brutal. From the menu, swipe right and select Night Colors. You will still never fall asleep, but your game will have a cool nightclub vibe.
There is still no dark mode for mobile versions of Gmail, Facebook, or Instagram, but the darkmode.me blog keeps track of new dark mode releases, collects design mockups, and issues bugs to app developers to add this feature.
Enjoy reading in bed without straining your eyes. Just don’t rely on Dark Mode for better sleep, or overuse it by tweeting in the cinema.