Update – February 27, 2019: Now you can enable this feature in Chome Canary from chrome://flags and enabling #enable-android-web-contents-dark-mode. The dark mode looks a bit weird in some web pages since it inverts images colors looking more like high contrast mode than dark mode. This is also available for the web.
Earlier: Google is known to be working on bringing dark mode for Android and the web. The latest development in this regard reveals that a new code change indicates that Chrome for Android will recolor web pages as well when using the browser’s upcoming dark mode.
With the inclusion of dark mode in a wide variety of Google apps and the addition of system-wide dark mode in Android Q. Google seems to be giving high priority to dark mode this year. Similar to Samsung’s browser, Google for Chrome may be employing a similar strategy for its own dark mode where it turns the web pages into the dark for more pleasing reading experience at night.
The change adds a new Chrome flag, #enable-android-web-contents-dark-mode, whose name alone makes its purpose fairly clear. Digging a little deeper, it is evident what the new flag will actually do. When the flag is enabled, a preference is toggled in Blink, Chrome’s underlying engine, called “force_dark_mode_enabled”. This preference, under the hood, tells Blink whether or not to use some of its built-in “high contrast” settings. These high contrast settings will simply change the colors of some aspects of web pages, and because they’re commonly used for accessibility purposes and are not designed to affect the performance.
Chrome’s experimental new dark mode for the web will arrive first on Chrome Canary in the coming days. As for the Android WebView, it may not arrive in WebView beta for a few more weeks, likely in version 74.