Instagram Dark Mode comes to Android and iOS

Dark Mode has finally come to Instagram with the introduction of the app’s latest version, and is available to both iOS and Android users.

Dark Mode works by making your phone’s screen darker, changing the background of apps and menus from white to black, with white overlaid text. If you look at the apps on your phone, many of them will be designed with crisp, white interfaces; very sleek looking, but there are a number of downsides to this modernist approach.

First, the light from the screens can be dazzling, particularly if you’re viewing your phone in a darkened environment – who hasn’t checked their phone in the middle of the night only to be blinded by the screen and woken up entirely? In an age in which we’re becoming more attuned to the wellbeing benefits of avoiding screen glare, the demand for Dark Modes has grown steadily.

Secondly, lighting up the pixels in your phone’s screen takes energy, meaning it depletes battery charge faster.

By switching to Dark Mode – and replacing many of the display’s white areas with black ones – fewer pixels have to be ‘on’, and thus Dark Mode serves as an energy saving measure.

If you have been trying out Instagram’s new app Threads then you can decide how dark you want the app to be. By tapping the Home button in the app, and going to Themes, there are a few options available including Daylight, Twilight, Midnight, Aurora, and Sunrise.

How do I turn on Instagram’s Dark Mode?

Though the new feature is an important one for many users, there’s actually no easy way to enable it within Instagram itself. Instead, Dark Mode is only activated if users have dark mode enabled system-wide on their device.

This means that you’ll have to go into your device settings in order to turn on Instagram’s Dark Mode, and once it’s enabled, the rest of your device will also be presented in Dark Mode.

Setting your device to Dark Mode is simple enough: just head to Settings > Display and you will see a toggle that allows you to choose between light and dark themes.

You’ll also need the latest version of iOS 13 or Android 10 running on your phone, and the most recent version of Instagram installed to your device.