Google Chrome has offered a forced dark mode setting on web pages for quite some time. However, it was not possible to choose the websites that you would like to see in light or dark theme individually. That changes now, as the Google Chrome developers are working on a new feature that allows you to set the dark theme per site. We will learn how to enable or disable the dark theme in Google Chrome for specific websites in this article.
Use dark theme per site in Chrome for Android (2021)
Before we get started, it’s worth noting that the option to use the dark theme per site is limited to Chrome for Android at the moment. First discovered by Reddit user u / Leopeva64-2, Chrome developers are currently testing it on the latest Canary version of the browser. If all goes according to plan, the feature should make its way to stable versions of Chrome. With that out of the way, here’s how to test the ‘Enable / Disable auto-darkening for site’ feature right now.
Enable or disable dark theme for individual websites in Chrome
- Open chrome: // flags and look for ‘Black out website checkbox in theme settings’. Alternatively, you can paste the following address into Chrome’s address bar:
chrome: // flags / # darken-websites-checkbox-in-themes-setting
- Here, choose ‘Enabled’from the menu next to the Chrome flag and restart the browser.
- You will now find a new “Darken Websites” checkbox on Chrome’s theme settings page. To access Chrome settings, tap on the three vertical dots icon in the upper right corner and choose ‘Settings’.
- From the Settings page, tap on ‘Theme’ and select the ‘Darken websites’ check box. Chrome will automatically start to force dark mode on all websites now.
- To enable or disable dark mode for a specific website, visit the page and choose ‘Enable auto-darkening for site’ or ‘Disable auto-darkening for site’from the three-dot context menu. The button is present below the desktop site toggle, as you can see in the image below:
- You can also set the dark theme for individual sites from Settings -> Site Settings -> Auto-darkening of web content. Here, you can manage the websites that you have allowed or blocked to follow the dark theme.
- Tap on a site from the list and choose ‘Allow’ or ‘Block’ to enable or disable forced dark mode for these websites.
- You also have the option to add site exceptions from this configuration page. All you have to do is tap on ‘ Add site exception‘, paste / type the URL and hit ‘Add’ to save the changes.
- Here is a comparison of the light theme and the dark theme on the Beebom website in Google Chrome. While you shouldn’t expect Chrome’s forced dark theme to be as perfect as a native implementation, it still does a decent job on most websites.
Choose websites to browse in dark mode in Google Chrome
Having the option to enable or disable the dark theme will help users to use the feature on websites that work well with Google Chrome’s dark mode. We’ll have to wait to see if this handy feature hits the desktop in the future. In the meantime, you can take a look at the best Google Chrome tips and tricks to use the browser to its full potential.
