Microsoft finally gives Outlook.com a dark mode

It’s probably too early to declare 2018 as the year of dark mode, but it’s definitely a trend on the rise.

Apple delighted macOS users in June when it announced dark mode as a flagship feature in the upcoming macOS Mojave. And now Microsoft is rolling out a dark mode to all Outlook.com users.

Microsoft keeps the panels easy to tell apart by using different shades of gray. If a user finds a specific message hard to read in dark mode, they don’t have to go back to settings and switch it off; the drop-down menu in the message has the option to “Turn on the Lights,” which will switch the view to normal mode, but only for that message.

With the selective lights-on function, Microsoft’s take on dark mode brings some welcome customization to the feature. It acknowledges that not all emails look the same and there may be some with dark colors that end up harder to read. It’s a feature that we hope spreads to other implementations of dark mode (you seeing this, Apple?).

Dark mode has been a long sought-after feature on Microsoft forums. Besides being easier on the eyes for some users, a darkened screen is a hallmark of hacker culture. Serious coding often means going into the Terminal or Command Line on a PC or Mac, with the UI being a blinking cursor on a black background.

If you want to get your dark on in Outlook.com, you can enable it in the settings menu and toggling dark mode to “on.”

Other previously announced Outlook updates are rolling out to users today, including Skype integration and an enhanced search field. The search bar gets a performance boost and deeper integration across the inbox, contacts, and calendar. Previously these features were available in beta testing. 

Fingers crossed that Microsoft’s design team will replicate it for the rest of Office 365 and bring dark mode to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more.