Core How-Tos
Turn on dark mode
When dimming alone isn't enough, dark mode flips the whole document to a true dark theme — dark page, light text — with one click.
Flip it on
Open the Docs Dimmer popup from any document at docs.google.com and switch on the Dark mode toggle. The document inverts straight away, with no reload, and switches back the moment you turn the toggle off.
How it works
- Dark mode inverts the document's colours, so the bright page becomes dark and the text becomes light — a genuine dark theme rather than a tint.
- The dimming and warmth overlays sit on top of the inverted page, so you can still layer a little extra dimming or warmth over dark mode for the most comfortable result.
- Like everything else in Docs Dimmer, it's drawn over the page and never changes the underlying document or how it looks to anyone you share it with.
One known limitation
Because dark mode works by inverting colours, embedded images, charts, and other picture content are inverted too — so photos can look like negatives. This is a known trade-off of every colour-inversion dark theme. If you're working in a document that's image-heavy, you may prefer to turn dark mode off and use the dimming and warmth sliders instead.
Related guides
Prefer a softer effect? See Dim the page & warm the colour. Want dark mode on some editors but not others? See Choose which editors are affected.