YouTube dark theme rolling out for some users on Android

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YouTube is the most popular video streaming service, preferred as the first option by scores of content creators and millions of users around the world. Despite its massive popularity, the video service from Google had users clamoring for a dark theme for a very long time, but with no response from the technology giant. Google finally relented and brought a dark theme for desktop users and then eventually brought this dark mode over for iOS users. Android users were said to receive this feature “soon”, and 4 months later, some users are finally getting this feature.

Some users are reporting that the official YouTube app on Android has mysteriously switched over to the dark theme. This dark theme has more of a dark gray tone than a pure black tone, so it is not completely blacked out. The general settings page within the app now has a switch for enabling this dark theme (which was enabled for the user when the app started up). You can, of course, switch back to the light theme if you wish to, so retaining this choice keeps everyone satisfied.

This dark theme appears to be on a staged rollout, and should hopefully roll out to all Android users eventually. However, with the inexplicable delay in implementing this feature on Android as against desktop and iOS, we aren’t holding our breath.

If you can’t wait for this dark theme to roll out, you can manually enable it on the official Android app provided you have root access. If you search our forums, there are various modified versions of the app that also enable this dark mode as well as a whole host of other features. Best of all, those modified apps generally don’t require root access to install!