MSN News for Windows 10 gets new dark theme for bedside reading

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Looks like the last update for MSN News brought a new feature that slipped by our eyes: night mode.

The feature appears in both the Mobile and PC versions of the app as a little toggle near the bottom of an article (or globally in the app settings). Switching it on simply toggles the article background from white to black and reverses the text color.

MSN News dark theme

So-called night mode settings have been very popular in apps lately, and with how often we stay up using our phones and computers we can understand why. Switching the background to black makes reading easier on your eyes — light text on a dark background is much easier in the darkness than "day" modes, i.e. looking directly into a light bulb.

Unfortunately, there are two caveats we have found:

  1. The theme does not change the white borders of the app, which leaves an odd contrast
  2. Custom article categories do not have the night mode feature, only articles that Microsoft sets as curated for the default sections

So far, we have not seen the dark mode feature roll out to MSN Money and other apps although Outlook did pick it up a few months ago. Likewise, other Windows 10 apps like Groove Music and Movies & TV have also grabbed user-controllable dark theme too.

What other apps would you like to get a night mode?

Thanks, Dennis R., for the tip!

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Daniel Rubino
Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central. He is also the head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007, when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and watches. He has been reviewing laptops since 2015 and is particularly fond of 2-in-1 convertibles, ARM processors, new form factors, and thin-and-light PCs. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.