How to activate the new dark mode of Google Chrome under Windows 10

Chrome 74 is officially being rolled out for Windows, Mac and Linux, thus marking the introduction of a new dark mode for Windows 10 users. The same dark mode arrived last month on macOS with Chrome 73 and today's update includes automatic support for Windows 10. If dark mode is enabled on Windows 10, Chrome automatically authenticates as a theme. The end result gives Chrome an almost identical appearance to the darker menu bars of the browser's Incognito mode.

While Google is activating this new dark mode under Windows, the company has not yet fully enabled it for all Chrome users. "I can confirm that we are currently offering this feature to a small number of Chrome M74 users and that it will become more widely available in the near future," says a Chrome Community Manager. If you do not want to wait until Google activates it completely, there is something to shorten the force in dark mode:

• Find the shortcut you use to launch Chrome and open the properties.
• Add "–force-dark-mode" at the end of the target location (without quotation marks)
• Start Chrome and dark mode will be activated. If you typically run Chrome from a pinned taskbar item, you must launch the keyboard shortcut, and then unpin / pin again to make it valid.

Chrome has always offered theme support to enable dark mode, but this official mode now means that the context menus are correctly themed and that you can read the download bar correctly. Chrome 74 also includes a number of other changes that are not as obvious to detect visually. Chrome's animation features can now be disabled to reduce motion sickness. A new flag prevents websites from detecting Incognito mode.

You can download Chrome 74 from the Google Chrome site or Help> About Chrome if you're already using the browser.