After teasing the mode at F8 developer conference and months of testing in selected countries, Facebook has finally rolled out a dark mode on Messenger. But here is the trick on how to activate it.
Users need to send someone or a chatbot, or even yourself a crescent moon emoji. The correct emoji is the one of the moon without a face -- (). Once they do, the screen will fill up with a shower of crescent moon emojis and you’ll get a prompt to activate the mode in settings. Then, go to your profile page in the app, wherein an option will be present to switch the mode on.
If you do not see the shower of moons emojis, you might have to double-tap their message, restart Messenger, or update the Messenger app to the latest version.
The roll out of dark mode comes months after Facebook launched a redesigned version of the app called Messenger 4 which further simplifies user interface and offers more customisation options.
Google at its 2018 Android Dev Summit confirmed that dark mode will extend battery life for Android smartphones, as the reduced brightness of the screens means less colours to show which leads to slower battery drain.
The dark mode replaces all the stark and bright white backgrounds with black, and also inverts text from black to white to match the interface. The search bar and some other rounded UI elements remain grey, but darker.
