Make Sites Have a Dark Theme in Edge Chromium
You may have a dark system theme; you may have configured all your favorite apps to use the dark theme. However, the websites you usually visit may be reluctant to play along, which can be frustrating when browsing – akin tosomeone opening a vampire’s coffin at noon.
Google Chrome used to have an option to force the website to display a dark theme; the results have never been perfect, but better than looking at the bright white page that is so irritating to the eyes. The company has since removed this option from the browser, alas, but don’t despair: Edge Chromium now offers this hidden feature. And since using Edge Chromium is similar to using Chrome, only with less browser bloat , switching won’t cause any trouble.
To implement the forced dark mode feature, open Edge Chromium and enter the following in the address bar:
edge://flags/#enable-force-dark
Once you’ve done that, your screen will look like this:
Click the “Default” button next to the flag and you can choose from several options that determine how your browser will automatically convert web pages to dark themes. We recommend that you use the default Enabled setting to get started, but be aware that you can tweak this artificial “dark mode” if your favorite sites look awful at first.
For an example of what this forced dark mode might look like, here are the good old Lifehacker dot com before and after screenshots:
Before
After
Boldly. I don’t like it, but I don’t hate it either. And if I were to write this article in the early morning hours of the morning or normal computer night time, I would probably prefer it to the default white background for our site.
I wish Edge Chromium was smart enough to let you switch between that fake dark mode and “normal” website theme on the fly – every change to the aforementioned browser flag requires a reset – that’s a small price to pay for less eye strain. However, if you find yourself annoying with the results of this dark mode setting, you can try one of these extensions, either of which gives you more control over how the fake dark mode looks on a given site:
Personally, I’m a fan of Dark Night Mode , but it’s good to have options given the particulars involved in forcing websites to change their appearance.