Windows Dark Mode Built In

Unfortunately, Windows has never been very good at customizing font sizes and colors. And Windows and apps have never done color themes such as dark mode properly. Unfortunately, I don't do Windows programming. 

But I can tell you what I do for myself. Over the past few years, I have found that I enjoy a black background with white text for most things. But like I said, Windows and apps like Chrome never do it properly. So if you want to try these settings you can. It involves remembering a few keystrokes. It might be a little complicated to understand what I am saying below so you may want to read it over a few times.

I have found that Windows magnifier has a built in color inverter that I like. It inverts everything. I don't use it for magnification because it doesn't work quite right for that. So instead of trying to set a dark color scheme in Windows, I just leave everything to default light scheme. ( ⊞ > ⚙ Settings > 💻 Personalization > 🎨 Colors > Choose your color > Light). I start Windows Magnifier with the keypress Windows Key and the + (plus) key at the same time (⊞+). If it starts zoomed in then I press ⊞ and - (minus) key at the same time so that it shows everything at default scale. While the magnifier is open I then press CTRL-ALT-I to Invert the colors of Windows. I can then minimize the magnifier by clicking on the - icon at the top right. Now the magnifier app is out of the way and all the colors are inverted the way I like them. The problem is that pictures are inverted as well. But I don't usually look at pictures in Windows. If I do need to look at an image in Windows then I press ⊞Esc at the same time and it turns off the magnifier. The next time you turn on the magnifier with ⊞+ it saves your color inversion and magnification settings and it stays minimized so that you don't have to do those again. So I just turn on the magnifier with ⊞+ and everything is inverted and then I turn it off with ⊞Esc if I am looking at images. You can also set the magnifier to start with Windows (Click on ⊞ > ◔ Ease of Access > 🔍 Magnifier > Start Magnifier after sign-in). 

Here are the keys to remember:

Now I also created an Instant Dark Mode extension that inverts colors on websites in Chrome. But it re-inverts images so that they look normal. If you purchase Instant Dark Mode extension then it lets you change the settings and here is how I set the settings to work well with Windows magnifier color inversion on: Click on the Instant Dark Mode icon 🌙 in the Chrome taskbar then click on "Start/Stop" to start the Instant Dark Mode on all websites in Chrome and then I uncheck "Invert Website colors". Then I check "Start automatically with Chrome browser". I also like to check "Add gray background to images with transparent backgrounds".

So all of my settings look like the following, and it works nicely with Windows magnifier Invert colors on:

 ❑ Invert website colors

 ☑ Invert images and videos

     ❑ Deep scan to invert background images (and some images in iFrames)

     ☑ Add gray background to images with transparent backgrounds

 ❑ Invert canvas element (Some games, some images and Google Sheets)

 ☑ Start automatically with Chrome browser

 ☑ Enable keyboard shortcut Start/Stop : Alt+I

Change shortcut key: chrome://extensions/shortcuts

 ❑ Detect if website already has dark mode and do not invert

 ❑ Darken background colors that do not invert well

 ☑ Don't invert colors when printing