You can hack in dark mode on Facebook Messenger by sending an emoji
Well, that’s a cool way to add a feature.

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Last year at Facebook’s annual F8 developer conference, the social giant promised to bring a dark mode to Facebook Messenger to soothe your burning retinas. As with everything Facebook promises, we’ve had to wait but now the feature is finally here.
It’s not as simple to get as flicking a switch in the settings. You’ll have to hack it in currently, with an easter egg, to get the dark mode enabled. Sending a humble emoji to anyone in your contacts list will suffice, which will then unlock the setting in your menu on both iOS or Android.

To save your retinas (and your screen), here’s what to do:
- Open the Facebook Messenger app on your phone
- Send a moon/crescent 🌙 emoji to anyone in your contacts (you can even send it to yourself)
- Tap that emoji like you’re playing Cookie Clicker until you see the screen fill up with the moon/crescent emoji as in the above screenshot.
- Once that happens, you’ll get a message saying that “You Found Dark Mode!” and you can turn it on from the settings page

The Dark Mode toggle will eventually turn up in a future app update. It’s cool that the Messenger team has put a fun way to add it ahead of schedule, so go send some emoji today!
I look forward to the day that all apps ship with a dark mode.
What do you think? Do you prefer this to the regular, bright Messenger platform? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.
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