How to Enable Automatic Dark Mode on Windows 11

Sat, 09 Mar 2024 09:09:07 +0000

Windows 11 doesn’t know how to change themes on its own yet: dark mode must be activated manually in Settings, and it stays that way. To make it trigger automatically, you have two paths, both of which are free: the Light Switch module from Microsoft PowerToys, introduced in version 0.95, or Auto Dark Mode, an open-source program with many more options.

The confusion arises because Windows does have a schedule, but it’s for Night light, which shifts screen colors toward the warmer end to reduce eye strain in the evening. This is something else entirely: it doesn’t affect the interface theme, which remains light even at midnight.

Microsoft PowerToys for Windows 11

Fri, 12 Jan 2024 14:20:51 +0000

PowerToys is a free and open-source collection of utilities that Microsoft develops for Windows 11 and Windows 10. It can be installed in a minute from the Microsoft Store, GitHub, or via winget, and each tool can be turned on or off individually in the settings.

The name has been around since the days of Windows 95, but today’s PowerToys has little to do with that package: it is an open project, updated every few weeks, which now features more than thirty different tools. At the time of writing, the latest stable version is 0.101 (build 0.101.2362.0), released on August 25, 2026: it introduced Window Hopper, Stable and Insider update channels, and the compact mode for the Command Palette, which has become the access point for almost everything else in the suite.

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How to Enable Automatic Dark Mode on Windows 11

Microsoft PowerToys for Windows 11