Google Chrome dark mode
Would you like to make your computer screen a little easier on your eyes or perhaps you'd like to save power, especially if you are a laptop user? Well, in this video, I'm showing you how to enable Dark Mode on all of your favorite apps and websites, including productivity tools, social media sites, even your system as a whole. So let's dive in. Hello, everyone. Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And let's start right here within our Google Chrome browser. Now at first glance, you probably think you should come up here and come down to Settings. And then maybe on the left hand side, select Appearance and then come here to Theme. And here within the Chrome Web Store, you're going to find a variety of different Themes. Here's one called Just Black. It looks exactly what we're looking for. We want dark. We want black. Let's select that Theme. I'm going to say Add It to Chrome and it's applied. Perfect, right? We can see the black here at the top,
but oh, wait a minute. If I go to YouTube or if I go to any other website, it hasn't changed a thing. Why is that? Well, in many ways you actually don't want your web browser to try and force Dark Mode. Why? Because a lot of things are going to look funny. It's going to try its best, but it really doesn't know what every single component is. So that's why we're looking at each website and tool on an individual basis.
YouTube dark mode
Here on YouTube, for example, what you want to do is select your profile picture
in the top right hand corner, come down here to Appearance Device Theme,
and then we can choose one of these three options. Now, if we select Use Device Theme, it's going to look at your computer settings. Now, YouTube is one of the few websites that actually give this as an option. But if we want to force Dark Theme or use the true Dark Theme, we can do so here. And your experience is probably going to be very, very different. I especially notice how different thumbnails stand out much differently within that Dark Theme. But again, this might be a much easier approach for your eyes, especially later in the day if you're getting ready for rest or sleep at the end of the day.
Facebook dark mode
Let's stick with social media for a minute and jump into my Facebook account. Now, Facebook makes it fairly easy for us here. Here in the top right hand corner, we select on our account and then select on Display & Accessibility. Now here, we've got a few different options here, including a Compact Mode if you'd like to turn that on and experiment with that. But right at the top, we have our Dark Mode. So I'm going to select On. And again, it's a very different experience. In fact, what I like about this is that the content in the middle of the screen, your main feed, often stands out a little bit more and you can ignore some of the things that Facebook is going to present to you here on the right hand side.
Twitter dark mode
Let's continue with our social media and we're heading over to Twitter. Now Twitter is perhaps one of my favorites when it comes to Dark Mode and the options that it gives us. Here on the left hand side, if we select on More, immediately, in fact, it's almost perfect. If we select on More, Display is right there, but if you need to scroll down, it's near the bottom of our options. We can click on Display. Now, the reason why I like this is that Twitter gives us a few different options here, including our font size. And if we want to change from the standard Twitter blue. But down below, it actually gives us two different Dark Mode options. The first one is called Dim.
And the reason why I like this is that sometimes pure Dark Mode, where it's absolutely black, almost midnight or pure black, can be almost too extreme on our eyes. I'm just going to hit Done here for a second. And it's almost a lighter, it's not quite a blue, but it's, you know, I guess a a charcoal gray or something like that. Now, if you want to go to your pure Dark Mode, well, here we can select Lights Out and it's going to be just a little bit darker. So now we're into that pure blackness here within our Twitter account.
Google Keep dark mode
Well, let's leave social media behind and jump into our productivity apps. And I'm going to start with Google Keep, one of my favorite tools for capturing quick notes.
Now Keep makes it super easy for us to enable Dark Theme. Up here, if we select our gear icon, just below Settings, we can say Enable Dark Theme. And so, suddenly everything is going to be into that Theme. I find this is really effective when it comes to things such as checklists. And especially if you have some images that you want to stand out maybe a little bit more. You can include that here within that Dark Theme. Google Keep is a great example as to why you want to enable these changes within the app itself. So here, we can see I've got two notes. This one's shaded in a red color, this one more of a yellowish color. But if I go back to the default view and if I disable the Dark Theme, you can see it's very, very different. It didn't keep those colors
when I switched to Dark Mode because, well, that sort of defeats the point of Dark Mode. So keep that in mind as you make these adjustments along the way, how often are you spending within these apps or these particular websites? What time of day are you using these particular website or apps? This is going to help you determine what's going to be the best for you when it comes to turning on Dark Mode.
Evernote dark mode
Now, speaking of notes, if you capture a lot of notes and review your notes throughout the day, that's an awful lot of white and bright light staring back at you. So here we are within Evernote and you may already be using Evernote
or some of these other tools on your mobile device in Dark Theme, but the benefit can carry over here within your desktop browser. So here within Evernote, if we click on our profile, we're going to come down to Preferences and here again, we do have this third option to use these system settings. But if we want to go directly to Dark Mode, we can do so right here. And the links are still visible, right? The links are still standing out in this particular case, but now we can go through and access all of our notes as well.
Taskade dark mode
Now, one of my favorite productivity apps of the past two years has been Taskade. One of the reasons is that you can use Taskade and set things up in so many different ways. But Taskade also makes it very, very useful and very easy for us to switch between the two. In fact, I don't even have to go to some complicated setting or click on my profile picture. If I come down here to the bottom left hand corner,
I can just toggle Dark Mode here. I've got the moon if I want to go back to the sun. I can hit the sun, if I want to go back to the Dark Mode. So this is really super quick and easy. So maybe, for example, if I'm looking at this project in my board view, I want to see it in a different light or in a different format. But if I'm looking in this Action Mode, I want to go back to that Dark Mode. So the great thing here is I can toggle back and forth really, really quickly depending on the project. If you are new to Taskade and want to try it for yourself,
Notion dark mode
be sure to click the link in the description down below. Now, very similar to many
of the other productivity tools that we've looked at so far, Notion gives us an awful lot of white space, whether we're managing a simple database like what you see here,
or our notes, our tasks. No matter what we're doing, we're often presented with an awful lot of white. Now in Notion, it's not as easy to turn on Dark Mode. But let me show you how to do it. Up here in the left hand corner, we want to select Settings and Members. And then under my account, we want to select My Notifications and Setting. And then here in the middle of the screen, under My Settings, we have Appearance. So we can either use that system setting. You can see a bit of a Theme here. Some apps will have this option. Others will not. But if we want to go into Dark Mode, we can do so immediately. And especially when it comes to these tools where you can upload and add so many different variety of content, including links and images, and everything else,
Todoist dark mode
it's really good to use that default setting. Now rounding out our collection of productivity tools, let's dive into Todoist, which is still one of the most popular
to-do list and task managers out there. Here, we want to come up here and select our account and don't click on Settings. We actually want to click on Theme. Now Todoist gives us a variety of different Themes here. First of all, we have an auto Dark Mode, which is essentially the same as some of the options we've seen earlier where it's going to follow what your system does. More on that in just a few moments. But down below, we actually have a few different Themes, including some Pro Themes
that we can choose from. Now, here we have our pure dark or our traditional dark,
shall I say, I'm going to say Update in this case. And now our entire task list is in that Dark Theme, but don't be afraid to experiment. You may want to come back to this Theme and take a look at some of the options that are available to you here, especially like how we saw on Twitter and some of the other tools
Gmail dark mode
that we've looked at previously. Now when it comes to one application where you spend an awful lot of time day in and day out, and that is your email inbox. So let's jump into Gmail and see how we can make this a little easier on our eyes. In the top right hand corner, if we select on Settings, Gmail makes it very easy for us because there's this entire Theme section here. I'm going to select View All so we can bring up all of the Themes. Now at first glance, you may say, well, I don't really want these jelly bean skittles here. And I don't want all of these colors going on. But if you keep scrolling down, you'll see some more basic colors you can experiment with here. And the nice thing is that you don't have to go pure black or pure dark if you don't want to.
Maybe you want something like this, which is called Dusk or Mahogany. Something that's dark, but not exactly pure black. So I'm going to hit Dusk here for just a moment. It's going to change the colors of other things as well. The one thing that you'll notice is that if I open up one of my emails itself, it's still going to remain in white. So unlike most of the tools we've looked at so far, the body of the message itself is still going to have that white color. If we go and hit Reply here, for example,
we're not actually going to have that black against it. It really is the Theme
Microsoft Office dark mode
that is going to make it dark in Gmail. But of course, not everyone is a Google user.
So let's, don't forget about Microsoft. And here we are within Microsoft Office, in our Word account in particular. Now, if you're writing a lengthy article, if you're reviewing a report, for example, there's an awful lot of white going on here. Well, the good news is is that Microsoft provides us with a way to change to Dark Mode as well. So here within any Office application, here I am within Word, I'm going to select on File and then I'm going to come all the way down and select Account. Now here, I can choose
both my Office background, but also my Office Theme. So I can either choose the system setting or I can choose one of these options down below. Now, once again,
the nice thing here is that we can choose between black and dark gray. So for example, if I go to black, let's go back to our document. Maybe this is just a little too dark for me. It's got good contrast, of course, between the text and the back of the page, but maybe I want something that's not quite as dark. I'm going to go back to my account. And here, I'm going to select dark gray. and that's still going to be much easier on my eyes And you'll actually notice that the background of the page is now white. So giving you a few more options
Microsoft Windows dark mode
just to get the right balance for you. Last but not least, let's see how we can turn on Dark Mode and change our Theme for the entire Windows system. So here, if we come down to our task bar, the easiest thing for you to do is hit the Search icon.
And I suggest that you just type in Dark Mode. That's actually going to bring up
this option here, Turn on Dark Mode for Apps. So if we select that, it's going to open up our system dialogue and we've got an awful lot of choices here to pick from. Now down below, we can choose a variety of different accent colors. You may want to explore some of the other options. But here at the very top, we have three choices to make. We can either choose our mode for both Windows and our apps, or we can customize it if we want it different for each. So just to clarify what it means if we say to choose our default Windows mode, we're talking about things like the task bar, and things like the dialogue and the windows that pop up. like the border, for example, around those applications. The one below is choosing your default app mode. And that means if we choose Dark Mode here, for example, then that will carry over to things such as Microsoft Office. If we have set it to go based on the device settings. So here, I can choose the difference between the two here, but if I want to go into my Dark Mode, I can select that here. And that's going to apply it elsewhere within my system. Sometimes it may just take a second, but now we've got that Dark Mode applied over. And because in my Windows Office setting I said that I want it to carry over, now we can see that we have that Dark Mode listed here as well. Now we covered an awful lot of apps and websites in this video, but which ones did I leave out? Or which tools do you wish had a Dark Mode? Or do you have trouble finding
where to change that setting? Be sure to let me know in the comments down below. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
