Tired of the constant eye strain that bright white screens cause? With this guide, you will be able to enable dark mode everywhere in Windows 10 to relieve eye strain.
From the operating system user interface to the productivity apps you use, like Office, to the websites you browse. This guide will remove every inch of white space on your screen.
Keep in mind that you may have to make some sacrifices to achieve completely 100% Dark Mode. For example, you might want to ditch your regular browser and switch to a suitable dark mode alternative. I will explain in more detail which programs and software are best for this tutorial below.
How to put Windows 10 in dark mode
To put Windows 10 into dark mode, first open the Start menu and enter your dark theme settings. Click on the first option that appears.
In the window that opens, scroll down and select Dark under “Select default application mode”.
Then don’t forget to change the taskbar, search results, and other accent colors. To do this, select a color on the page, and then be sure to turn on the options under Show accent color on the following surfaces. In the image above, the option that needs attention is highlighted.
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This will put most of your Windows 10 apps and UI elements into dark mode, but not all of them. For example, Windows Explorer and Microsoft Store apps will be dark, but legacy apps like Task Manager and Control Panel won’t.
Unfortunately, you can’t change the color of the Task Manager with the tips above, but you can download an alternative that’s more pleasing to the eye.
I would recommend Process Hacker 2. While you cannot make everything white, you can individually change the colors for most elements and elements and choose a darker color. You can see how mine looks above. It’s not perfect. But it is a much better alternative to the bright colors of the default Task Manager.
There is an alternative option that you can use to make absolutely everything on your computer a dark mode, including all windows and outdated applications, but it has some unwanted side effects. To do this, open the Start menu and look for the High Contrast Mode theme.
Then carefully choose the colors you want to use for your dark mode theme. Choose a range of muted colors so you can still distinguish between text, icons, and backgrounds. Above is an example of what I chose.
This is how your interface will look after that. To find the colors that suit you, you need to make some changes. If at some point you want to turn it on or off, just use the Alt + Left Shift + Printscreen keyboard shortcut.
For me personally, it is much better for my eyes and outperforms any white light reduction apps like f.lux. However, you are not finished yet. When you use the browser, the white screen is still displayed, and switching from black to white can be a nightmare for your eyes.
To change everything you see in your browser to a dark theme, go to the Chrome extension store and download Dark Reader This will make your text white and the web page color black.
Keep in mind that you can turn this off for each site using the filter list. This means that if a website like YouTube has a decent built-in dark mode, you can rely on it.
Finally, you can change your Chrome tabs and UI elements to dark mode with the new theme. You can find dark / black themes in the store here. Personally, I find Morpheon Dark the most pleasing to the eye.
It’s also worth noting that Chrome will release the dark mode feature to the stable branch by the end of 2019, so you won’t have to rely on any extensions.
Summary
That’s all. With this guide, you’ve turned every element of your Windows 10 PC into Dark Mode. All your essential Windows 10 elements will be dark thanks to the dark theme.
High Contrast Mode then ensures that the color in all apps, even third-party apps, is dark, not bright white. Next, our suggested tips for Chrome will make web browsing easier for your eyes.
We managed to use a combination of theme and extension to make everything dark, including Facebook, Google Docs, Instagram and Reddit. Not every UI element is perfect for these tips, and sometimes a few things need to be tweaked, but it’s certainly much better for your eyes than the other options.
One final note: if you’re editing photos or videos, the blank canvases will of course be white, so it’s best to turn off High Contrast mode first.
What do you think of this guide? Did you find this useful? Have questions about these tips? If so, feel free to connect to Twitter and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
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