Chrome 74 Dark Mode Now Syncs with Windows 10 Color Settings

Google has released Chrome 74 into the beta channel and with it comes the browser's highly anticipated Dark Mode feature for Windows 10. In Chrome 74, Google has finally made it possible for Chrome to detect when dark mode is enabled in Windows 10 and switch to dark mode in the browser.

While Mac users received a working Dark Mode in Chrome 73, the code for synchronizing Windows 10's color settings with Google Chrome's Dark Mode had not been wired up in time. This feature is now available in Chrome 74 beta that was released today.

This means if you enabled Dark Mode in Windows 10, Chrome will automatically honor the setting and switch to Dark Mode in the browser as well. Unfortunately, the synchronization still has some bugs to work out. 

For example, when I tried testing the synchronization in a current Windows 10 1809 build, it would not work. On the other hand, it worked fine in a Windows 10 Insider build as shown below.

The good news is that Chrome 74 is expected to be released on April 23rd, 2019 and Windows 10 Build 1903 is slated for April as well. This gives Google enough time to work out the kinks so that it is ready when Chrome goes into the Stable branch.

Additional features in Chrome 74

Chrome 74 Beta comes with some additional features such as the prefers-reduced-motion CSS media query, which allows a web site to detect if a user prefers less motion on a site.  This can be used by users who suffer from vestibular disorders or find that much animation and motion is a distraction.

"Support will be added for the CSS prefers-reduced-motion media query. The prefers-reduced-motion media query detects whether the user has requested that the system minimize the amount of motion it uses; in particular motion-based animation. This is for users who either require or prefer minimized motion. For example people with vestibular disorders often desire animation motion to be kept to a minimum"

Other features that are being worked on for Chrome 74 is the ability to prevent web sites from detecting when your in incognito mode, warnings about lookalike urls, and tab hover card images.