How to activate YouTube’s hidden ‘Dark Mode’

It requires some fiddling, but the process takes less than a minute

It’s a bold, unfamiliar new look that’s likely to divide opinion

Google has added a new feature to YouTube that dramatically transforms the look of the site.

Dark Mode swaps YouTube’s classic white-and-red theme for black, and also tweaks the user interface.

Activating Dark Mode requires a little bit of fiddling, but the entire process takes less than a minute.

It’s currently only available on the website, and not the app.

Here’s how to activate YouTube’s Dark Mode on Google Chrome:

1. Fire up YouTube and sign into your account 
2. Access Chrome DevTools by opening the Chrome menu (directly below the browser’s Close key) and selecting Developer Tools in the More Tools section
3. Click on Console
4. Paste document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=fPQ4jCL6EiE" into the text box and hit enter
5. Close DevTools and refresh the page (sign in again if this logs you out)
6. Click your Google profile picture in the top right corner of the screen, select Dark Mode and activate it

It’s a bold, unfamiliar new look that’s likely to divide opinion, but its novelty hasn't worn off for me quite yet.

Major sites and services have slowly started introducing their own versions of a ‘Dark’ or ‘Night’ mode over recent months, including Twitter and Google Maps.

Hopefully it won't be long before the YouTube app gets the same functionality.