How to Use YouTube Dark Mode

May 20, 2017 - 25 Comments

How to enable Dark Mode on YouTube it looks great

If you watch a lot of YouTube particularly in the dark or evening hours you may find it useful to enable the all-new Dark Mode YouTube interface. Dark Mode is just what it sounds like, it basically inverts the YouTube color scheme so that the background and surrounding interface of YouTube is blacks and dark grey rather than whites.

It looks great, and you can enable Dark Mode for YouTube on any web browser.


You will need to be logged into a Google account on YouTube to have access to the feature, beyond that it’s just a simple little settings toggle.

Enabling Dark Theme on YouTube

At the moment the dark theme is available on the YouTube website, soon perhaps it may be available in the apps too:

  1. Go to https://youtube.com/new (it can be an individual video or the homepage) and login if you have not already
  2. Click on your user avatar in the upper right corner of YouTube
  3. YouTube Dark Mode

  4. Choose “Dark Theme” from the dropdown menu
  5. YouTube Dark Theme

  6. Toggle the switch for “Activate Dark Theme” to the ON position, the interface change takes effect immediately
  7. YouTube Dark Mode theme enabled

Now everything on YouTube will be dark, which makes watching videos in the dark or in the evening hours a bit nicer.

Dark Mode on YouTube enabled

YouTube Dark Mode is also nice because it helps to focus on the video by deemphasizing some of the elements on the page like video comments and other auxiliary details.

You can turn the Dark Theme off at anytime just by switching the toggle again.

If you’re watching YouTube at night on a Mac, you might want to pair this with Night Shift mode on the Mac, and you can use Flux on a Windows PC and other Mac OS X versions to bring a night-friendly color hue to your display. Maybe some day we’ll get a complete dark mode for Mac OS too, but for now you can switch the menus to be darker in mac OS.

Don’t miss our other great YouTube tips and tricks here too.

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Related articles:

Posted by: Paul Horowitz in Tips & Tricks

25 Comments

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  1. AJ says:

    I tried checking out the “New Youtube” and they tell me that my browser is not supported. I have been using dark mode for ages before I had a new hard drive put in, but now nothing is working.

    tl;dr Safari has no drop down and can’t access new features.

  2. AJ says:

    I tried checking out the “New Youtube” and they tell me that my browser is not supported. I have been using dark mode for ages before I had a new hard drive put in, but now nothing is working.

    tl;dr Safari has no drop down and can’t access new features.

  3. Vladimir says:

    Why?? Why before 2014 UI was bright, colorfull and interesting, but after 2014 everybody want a “dark UI”… I don’t get it… Is that cool?

  4. Charles says:

    Ohkaay. It works now. I tried using the Chrome’s trick, but it didn’t work earlier. Now with the new URL it is working fine.

  5. John R says:

    No matter how many times I turn on the dark mode, it will not stay once I quit Safari. Maybe that is the only way, just a preview. But would have been nice to make permanent.

  6. cleamon says:

    Don’t bother, the preview is closed.

  7. cleamon says:

    Don’t bother, they’ve closed the preview.

  8. sphere says:

    For Safari:

    NOTE: this is for MacOS Safari.
    This brings material design to YouTube too.
    Steps for dark mode and material design for MacOS Safari:

    1. In Safari > Preferences > Advanced tab > Enable “Show developer menu in menu bar”

    2. Go to YouTube.com

    3.Click on Develop in the menu bar > Show Error Console

    4.Go to Storage tab in the console > Expand cookies on left pane > click on the “www.youtube.com” under cookies
    If there is a cookie with Name “VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE” already there, delete it first.

    5. Then at the Bottom in console with the “>” icon, paste this and hit enter:
    document.cookie=’VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=fPQ4jCL6EiE;domain=.youtube.com;path=/;max-age=’+100*365*24*60*60+’;’;

    6. Close the console and refresh the youtube page.

    7.Click on the avatar / profile image on top right > Dark Mode

  9. Dan says:

    Or you can go here: https://www.youtube.com/new
    Then click on “TRY IT NOW” in the middle of the page.

    Then the menu, the article shows, will be available when you click on your Avatar.

  10. T.S. says:

    Seems they left a couple of steps out. You first have to go to the bottom of the page and click on “Test new features”. Then, click “Try new YouTube” in the middle of the page. On the next page, click “TRY IT NOW”. Then you will see “Dark Theme” when you click on your avatar.

  11. Jermaine says:

    Does not work in Firefox. The dropdown menu only has basic options.

  12. Pete says:

    Jep, Safari 10.1.1 … I don’t have that option, when clicking on my User Avatar. Actually it doesn’t show ANY of the options you’re showing on your screen shots. :-(

  13. Henry says:

    Does not work in Safari?

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