Facebook, the dark theme is getting closer

The house of Menlo Park is testing the dark mode also on Facebook, the last platform left without a dark interface. Here's how it will be

After Messenger and after Instagram, the dark theme could finally arrive on WhatsApp and Facebook: the beta version of WhatsApp for Android, available for a few days, already integrates it while on Facebook the dark mode is making its first appearances in these hours.

The reports come both from the United States, where some users have found themselves with the app that became dark at sunset, and from Italy where some users with Huawei smartphones have posted some screenshots of the new theme. But this is, again, the app in beta and, what's more, the dark theme doesn't seem at all ready to debut on the official app yet. Instead, it's much more likely that Facebook is doing further testing to gather feedback and fine-tune the dark mode on its main app as well. Also because it's not yet clear how dark the dark theme will be.

Dark, but not darkest

What users have seen in the past few hours is an interface that is not black at all, but dark gray. The choice of Facebook, therefore, would be to not sacrifice too much the readability of content and the visual performance of photos and videos that, with a completely black background, stand out too much and can annoy the eyes. The same choice, moreover, will almost certainly be made for the dark mode of the Facebook website that has already been announced at the F8 conference in 2019 and is being tested since early 2020.

The other apps

As everyone knows two apps of the Facebook group already have a dark theme integrated: Messenger was updated in April 2019, Instagram starting in October 2019. Dark WhatsApp is being tested starting with the latest beta version (the 2.20.13 for Android) and those who want to try it can already do so by downloading the APK of the app. However, the road seems to be marked and Facebook will also follow the dark mode trend soon.

Enable dark mode on Facebook today

Those who just can't wait for Facebook to launch its official dark mode, if they have a cell phone with an Android mobile operating system can resort to a trick: enable dark mode directly from the device's settings. This way all apps, including Facebook, will become dark. It's clear, however, that this is not optimized for each individual application. So the graphic rendering and readability of content will not be the best.