WhatsApp is one of the most used IM services worldwide. People use WhatsApp to connect with their loved ones who are far away, students use WhatsApp to share their academic data with each other, collaborate with their colleagues, and whatnot. One minute yet, a feature that impacts at scale is the availability of the Dark Mode for Android and iPhone. After testing it for a few months on the beta version of WhatsApp, Facebook is now rolling this feature out to the public.
While building the dark mode for WhatsApp, the team focused on two key areas. They are as follows:
- Readability: When choosing colors, we wanted to minimize eye fatigue and use colors that are closer to the system defaults on iPhone and Android respectively.
- Information Hierarchy: We wanted to help users easily focus their attention on each screen. We did this by using color and other design elements to make sure the most important information stands out.
We will be going on one by one to learn how to enable Dark Mode on WhatsApp for Android & iPhone. But first, make sure that you have the latest version of WhatsApp on your respective device.
Enable Dark Mode on WhatsApp for Android
- If you are running Android 9, start by opening WhatsApp on your Android device.
- Select the menu on the top right corner, denoted by three vertical dots.
- Tap on Settings.
- Now select Chats.
- Go to Theme and finally select Dark.
- This will activate the Dark theme on WhatsApp on your Android device.
- In case you are running Android 10 or later, just set your system theme as Dark and it will appear on WhatsApp too.
Turn on Dark Theme on WhatsApp for iPhone
- This feature is only available on iOS 13 and newer.
- Set your system theme as Dark to enjoy the latest dark mode on WhatsApp for iOS.
The reason behind this is that the theme is universally implemented across apps due to the availability of system APIs that let these apps read the device’s theme configuration without compromising any privacy-related issues known until now.
This new feature will learn you use WhatsApp on your device without straining your eyes in the darkness.
