What you need to know
- Google Drive now has a dark mode on the web.
- You can toggle between light and dark modes by going into Drive settings.
- The mode doesn't extend to Docs, Sheets, and Slides.
- Gmail and Calendar are yet to make the switch.
It only took Google several years, but the Google Drive web app now has dark mode. Google announced the change on April 16, and while it usually rolls out features in a phased manner, that isn't the case this time — dark mode is available to all Google Drive users globally.
This includes users with personal Google accounts, Google Workspace customers, and Workspace Individual subscribers. If you have a Workspace account, you don't need admin access to enable the feature — it's located in the settings, and you can easily toggle between light and dark modes.
Same goes for everyone else too. When you select the gear icon (located on the top right) and choose Settings, you'll now notice an Appearance sub-menu with three options: Light, Dark, and Device default. You can manually select light and dark modes, or if you prefer changing it at a system level, use Device default and the mode changes based on your system settings.
The sidebar has a dark grey tone, with the folder view switching to a fully black color scheme. And while Drive itself has dark mode on the web, that doesn't extend to Docs, Slides, and Sheets, so if you pull up any documents, they will default to light mode.
Google took its time to roll out the feature to Drive users — so much so that I resorted to using the Dark Reader extension to get dark mode on all of Google services. While Google Search on the web got dark mode back in 2021, several Google services are yet to make the switch, notably Gmail, YouTube, and Calendar. If you don't want to wait until Google rolls out dark mode across its suite of services, I highly recommend Dark Reader.
