Dark Mode, available on devices such as OSX, iOS, and Android, has become extremely popular in recent years. If you’re like me, you will love this feature, both because of the visual appeal and the proposed benefits – including less strain on your eyes and battery saving on mobile devices.
One of the biggest benefits of using Dark Mode on any device is the reduced exposure to blue light. This is important as blue light stimulates the body’s production of serotonin and dopamine. Serotonin and dopamine are both neurotransmitters that affect you in many ways, including mood and sleep. In short, blue light tricks our brain into thinking it is daytime, which in turn can cause us to have issues with our moods or have trouble regulating sleep patterns.
But how can this feature be activated on your Salesforce display? Here’s how to make sure your org is taken to the dark side…
1. Salesforce Dark Theme
Salesforce Dark Theme is a Google Chrome extension developed by salesforceblue.com that allows you to toggle dark mode on or off, directly in your Salesforce org from the extension itself.
This Chrome extension supports:
- Lightning Experience
- Classic Experience
- Trailhead
- Developer Docs
- Component Reference Library
- Lightning Design System Library
- Knowledge Articles
- Discussion Forums
2. Super Dark Mode
Super Dark Mode is another extension for Google Chrome developed by HiSoft – it’s just like dark mode, but even darker.
Where the Salesforce Dark Theme extension enables dark mode for only Salesforce pages, this extension enables dark mode for all pages in your browser. Go full blackout!
3. Night Shift on Mac
Night Shift is a feature on Apple devices that shifts the colors of your displays to the warmer end of the color spectrum when enabled. Though technically, it doesn’t result in a reduction in blue light, but rather a filtered amber version.
You can learn how to enable Night Shift here.
4. Night Light on Windows
Night Light is the Windows equivalent to Night Shift on the Mac. It works in effectively the same way – by shifting your display colors to the warmer end of the spectrum.
You can learn how to enable Night Light here.
5. Salesforce on Dark Mode
Salesforce themselves did previously have a way of toggling dark mode on and off via their Lightning Extension for Google Chrome. However, due to not it not being able to keep up with technical requirements in each release, it is no longer supported.
Instead, Salesforce is actively updating the Salesforce Lightning Design System (SLDS) and its CSS architecture, focusing on styling hooks, to simplify system-wide adjustments to visual UI elements such as color and typography. These SLDS enhancements may pave the way for a future night mode. The initial rollout of these changes will be in our Starter interface this summer.
Kat Holmes, EVP and Chief Design Officer at Salesforce, has made a point of mentioning that at the moment the benefits and risks of extending our CSS-only SLDS updates beyond Starter are unclear, so this is a work in progress on how they can create a durable solution.
Summary
Although Salesforce has disabled the dark mode option in the Salesforce Lightning Extension, there are still ways to activate this feature. Either utilize the extensions or – if your main worry is with blue light – you can take advantage of the features built into your operating system.
Come and join me on the dark side!