This article was published on October 8, 2019

Instagram now supports dark mode on iOS 13 — here’s how to enable it

It's prettyyyy, prettyyyyy easy


Instagram now supports dark mode on iOS 13 — here’s how to enable it

Welcome to TNW Basics, a collection of tips, guides, and advice on how to easily get the most out of your gadgets, apps, and other stuff.

Instagram has joined the dark side. Well, not really, sort of. The Facebook-owned social media platform has updated its app for iOS 13 with support for dark mode.

The setting is an extension of iOS’ system-wide dark mode, and Instagram has basically revamped its UI to match the theme.

In case you haven’t already caught a glimpse, here’s what it looks like:

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No surprises there, it’s the standard combo of black and grey, mixed with white text and icon layouts.

How to turn on dark mode

To get the dark look, you’ll need to enable iOS 13’s own dark mode. That seems to be the only way for now, since Instagram has yet to include a native switch in its app.

Anyways, here are the steps you need to follow:

  • Pull the control center on your iPhone
  • Long-press on the brightness indicator
  • Select dark mode from the toggle options below to enable it
  • Boom! You’re done

Alternatively, you can ask Siri to enable dark mode by uttering the magic phrase “Hey Siri, turn on/off the dark mode.”

A third way to do it is by going to Settings > Display & Brightness, and then tapping on the “Dark” theme option. As easy as that.

Once you’ve used any of these three approaches, Instagram will automatically switch to dark mode too.

Unfortunately, Instagram’s dark mode is currently exclusively available on iOS. Don’t fret, though: it seems that the Facebook subsidiary is testing the feature on Android, so chances are it’ll make its way to Google’s operating system soon.

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