It has not been officially announced by the social media giant, however Facebook Messenger has a night mode. Considering it’s kind of ‘illegal’ there is a special trick to access this feature that will be easy for your eyes.
Dark mode turns the background of your chats black, and the keyboard and chat bubbles grey and blue, so that there’s not so much bright light shining into your eyes.
Facebook first announced that it was working on a dark mode in October 2018, describing it as “a re-skinned interface that cuts down on the glare from your phone”.
The company still hasn’t officially announced that the feature is available, but some Reddit users appear to have stumbled across a hidden way to access it.
To activate dark mode, make sure your Messenger app is up to date, then open a chat window and send the crescent moon emoji to one of your contacts.
It might take a few attempts before anything happens. Some users report having to tap the moon emoji in the chat after you’ve sent it.
Eventually, moon emojis will rain down from the top of the screen, and a message will appear stating: “You’ve found dark mode!” with a prompt to “Try it in Settings”.
Clicking on the prompt will take you through to Messenger settings, where you can choose to switch dark mode on or off.
Switching dark mode on will result in all of your chats appearing in the new format. However, only you will see them that way.
If your contacts want to enable dark mode form themselves, they will also need to send the crescent moon emoji to one of their contacts.