Google Search’s dark theme goes from gray to pitch-black on the web for some

Brace yourselves as the darkness further darkens

We all like dark mode for many reasons: reduced eye strain, battery savings for OLEDs, and its coolness factor, to name a few. Android adopted the feature in 2019, but it was only in December of 2020 that Google started testing it on Search for desktop. The experience gradually spread to more users before finally rolling out to everyone in September of last year — in the color gray. New evidence suggests that Google wants to introduce an even darker dark mode to Search.

Google’s testing a pitch-black dark theme (#000000 color code) on its desktop Search results pages, per 9to5Google. The new design also makes links appear more vibrant with a darker blue hue. Even the purple color for previously visited pages has been tweaked to be bolder, ever so slightly.

The change reportedly doesn’t affect the google.com homepage (which still uses light gray) and is only available for those randomly included in the A/B test. While the new experience hasn’t rolled out to everyone just yet, the older one is fully available for use. Go to any standard Google search, click the Settings icon next to your user profile image on the top right, navigate to the Appearance tab, and select Dark theme.

Dark theme is not the only thing brewing for Google Search, though. We previously saw glimpses of a new dynamic color theme for image results. The feature is not exactly Material You, which takes bits and pieces of color from your phone’s wallpaper. Instead, it’ll reportedly take advantage of the same underlying theming engine (dubbed "Monet") to derive colors directly from the image result currently in view.

While Google has been striving to improve the user experience by unifying interfaces across platforms lately, this pitch-black dark mode is a derivation from the formula it has settled on. The company has argued for a long time that black backgrounds are more jarring to the eye than gray backdrops, with most of its services and apps opting for the latter, including Google Search on Android. It's unclear why Google would backtrack on this decision, but as of now, the pitch-black variation is only part of an experiment not available for everyone, so it might not come to full fruition in any case.

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