WhatsApp dark mode will soon be coming to desktop devices according to recently discovered code for the web-based version of the messaging app.
The new color scheme was discovered by developer Mahesh B Wijerathna, who published his findings on Twitter, together with screengrabs demonstrating how the design will look once it’s implemented.
I’ve been developing the Dark mode for @WhatsApp desktop for sometime now and i just saw these updates on v0.4.930 which has their signature dark color. They might release the dark mode soon. Here’s how it looks at the moment. Pinging @WABetaInfo pic.twitter.com/JFc40rvZgYFebruary 24, 2020
These early peeks reveal a dark mode that uses the same shades of dark gray and green as the mobile versions. However, the desktop implementation isn’t quite finished yet; as additional screengrabs posted by WABetaInfo reveal, emoji backgrounds are still white, though everything else seems to be ready for launch.
WhatsApp dark mode is already available for beta testing for Android and iOS, so it’s possible that the developers are preparing to launch it for all platforms simultaneously in the near future.
Try it now (sort of)
If you can’t wait that long though, you can get an early peek at how it’ll look using the Stylus extension for Firefox and Chrome (the latter of which will also work with the new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge).
This extension lets you apply custom CSS (cascading style sheets) to any website of your choosing, and there’s a user-created dark mode for WhatsApp available to download and install right now. The look isn’t identical to WhatsApp’s own design, but you could tweak it slightly to use the color hex codes discovered in the web version’s source code.
