You can finally force most apps to dark mode on your Pixel; here’s how

With Android QPR2, which started rolling out a few days ago in early December, Google is bringing a slew of cool new features to Android — specifically its Pixel phones. One of these is a feature I’m sure many of you have been praying for: a forced dark mode that applies to most apps, even if they don’t support a dark mode out of the box.

The new feature is called Expanded dark mode, and here’s how you can enable it on your Pixel phone as well as a few examples of how it works.

Step 1: Make sure your Pixel is compatible

Before we get started, you need to make sure you have a compatible phone. All Pixels that have received the Android QPR2 update should have the new Expanded dark mode out of the box. This includes every Google phone since the Pixel 6 series. I haven’t personally tested all of these out, but it’s available on my Pixel 10 Pro XL, Pixel 9a, Pixel 9 Pro, and my husband’s Pixel 7 Pro. Here’s the complete list:

Step 2: Install the December update

If you want to force your light-mode-only apps to switch to a darker theme, you have to make sure your Pixel phone is running the December update. Under Settings > About Phone > Build number, you should see a number that starts with BP4A.251205.006. If not, go to Settings > System > Software updates > System update and Check for update, then wait for it to download and install.

This is the easiest one. Go to Settings > Display & touch > Dark theme and switch from the Standard to the Expanded dark mode. Make sure Use dark theme is turned on or that there’s a Schedule to turn it on and off automatically.

Google is marketing this feature as an accessibility and readability improvement, not a solution to lazy developers. This should tell you what you need to know about it: It’s not foolproof, and app developers should still make the effort to implement a native dark theme in their apps. That will always be a better solution than a forced dark look with unoptimized contrast, graphics, and iconography.

But when developers are lazy or stubborn — hello, Amazon! — this should be a good stop-gap solution to avoid getting blinded by a super bright app when you’re reading in the dark (or at any time of day, for you forever-dark-themers). In my tests, I found it was quite hit-and-miss and worked best with apps that don’t have a ton of graphics or embedded web pages.

For instance, the toggle does diddly squat for the Amazon app or my local banking app, because I suspect these two are built using web wrappers. It did, however, work well for Transavia, converting the entire UI and keeping everything readable and usable. Check the screenshots above.

Most apps with a map, though, like Citymapper and the French IDF Mobilités, didn’t benefit a lot from the toggle since the map itself is an image, and it was left alone. The rest of the interface flipped, but the map remained white, which created a bit of an ugly contrast.

However, this is still in general better than the color inversion toggle in Accessibility since that one doesn’t differentiate between images and UI elements and inverts everything, often creating an ugly and impossible to decipher interface. It’s also a bit more reliable than the Override force-dark toggle under Developer options because it seems to work on more apps.

After a couple of days with it, I think this is an excellent idea if the apps you use benefit from it. For me, though, most of the big light app culprits include graphics or icons that look like a confused chimera of light and dark under Expanded dark mode. I’m returning to the Standard dark mode, but you should give it a try to see whether it works for your selection of apps or not.