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ankit-brijwasi
ankit-brijwasi

Posted on • Updated on

Enable Dark mode in chrome on Ubuntu

Recently I started using Ubuntu as my default OS for programming and I am loving working in it!

But there was an issue which I faced, By default in Google Chrome dark mode is not enabled and it was kind of a letdown.

After digging up the Internet I found that In order to enable the Dark mode I needed to edit the google-chrome.desktop file.

If you are also dealing with a similar issue then, just follow along

Firstly open, the google-chrome.desktop file using,
sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop

After the file has been opened, you will need to edit two lines

1. Search for the line-

Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable %U
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

replace it with-

Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable %U --enable-features=WebUIDarkMode --force-dark-mode
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

2. Search for the line-

Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

replace it with-

Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable --enable-features=WebUIDarkMode --force-dark-mode
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Now, Save the file and restart Chrome. Dark mode should be enabled now

Thanks for reading!
Have a nice day!πŸ˜‡

Top comments (8)

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knufle profile image
Marcel • Edited

Thank you, Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS here and it definitely works. However, it seems that the "google-chrome.desktop" file gets overwritten once Chrome updates and then you lose all the config again, did that happen to you? If so, do you know any fixes?

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ankitbrijwasi profile image
ankit-brijwasi

Yeah, but I don't know if this is fixable or notπŸ˜•

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tarash profile image
Taras Habrylchuk

My workaround, run with sudo this shell script.
sed -i 's/^Exec=\/usr\/bin\/google-chrome-stable$/& --enable-features=WebUIDarkMode --force-dark-mode/' /usr/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop
sed -i 's/%U/--enable-features=WebUIDarkMode --force-dark-mode &/' /usr/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop

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mouhzero profile image
MOUHSSINE

Thank you for this, every-time I updated chrome I come back here to make it dark again ;).
I have Ubuntu 22.04

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ankitbrijwasi profile image
ankit-brijwasi

Gald to know, that it helped youπŸ₯³πŸ˜‡

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rjfranco_95 profile image
RJ Franco

It worked for me after I restarted my entire session.
Thanks a lot

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ankitbrijwasi profile image
ankit-brijwasi

Glad to know!πŸ₯³πŸ˜‡

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thomasbnt profile image
Thomas Bnt β˜•

Great post! You can add

#linux

What are clouds made of? Linux servers, mostly.
to your post if you want πŸ’ͺ🏼