Better not to get attached.īut sometimes they do something so senseless that it is incumbent upon anyone who cares at all to throw the company’s justification in its face and tell them they blew it The last time I cared enough was with Google Reader. To paraphrase Sun Tzu, if you wait long enough by the river, the bodies of your favorite Google products will float by. We’ve seen so many Google icon languages over the years that it’s hard to bring oneself to care about new ones. That can be important, especially with a company like Google, which abandons apps, services, design languages, and other things like ballast out of a sinking hot air balloon (a remarkably apt comparison, in fact). Companies always talk loud and long about their design language and choices, so as an antidote I thought I’d just explain why these new ones are bad and probably won’t last.įirst I should say that I understand Google’s intent here, to unify the visual language of the various apps in its suite. Also, in the extension's options, you can select from a variety of dark themes.Google really whiffed with the new logos for its “reimagination” of G Suite as Google Workspace, replacing icons that are familiar, recognizable, and in Gmail’s case iconic if you will, with little rainbow blobs that everyone will now struggle to tell apart in their tabs. The Dark Mode extension works well with Gmail and lets you compose and read email messages in dark mode. Click it to enter (and then exit) dark mode for any web page. Install the Dark Mode extension for Chrome and you'll see a little toggle switch gets added in the top right of the browser. It's also great for Google Drive, which lacks a built-in dark mode option. There is, however, an extension that lets you enable dark mode for any web page, including Gmail. Unlike Gmail, Google's Chrome browser does not feature a built-in dark mode. In both cases, you are greeted by the standard formatting with a bright, white background, which can be jarring when merrily perusing your inbox in dark mode. Neither theme, however, maintains its black background when you open an email or click Compose to start a new message. Scroll down to the section below the photo themes and select either the Dark or Terminal theme.Įither theme provides a black background with white text, but the Terminal theme uses a slightly darker shade of black. To enable dark mode for Gmail, click the gear icon in the top right and choose Themes.

Google drive logo black background