Microsoft Word's black mode gets even darker for Beta Insiders

Black mode will soon invert the colors of your Word documents.

What you need to know

• Microsoft Word's dark mode now inverts the colors of your documents.
• Previously, the app just inverted the colors of its menus.
• The change is currently available in the Insiders Beta channel.

Office Insiders on the Beta Channel have an improved dark mode to try out. Now, when you set Microsoft Word to its black theme, the app will invert the colors of your document. Previously, when you used the black theme, the app would invert its menus but leave the document alone.

The change was spotted and shared by Hayden Barnes, an engineering manager for Ubuntu on Windows Subsystem for Linux at Canonical.

If you open up the non-Beta version of Office and switch to black mode, you'll see a bright white document and dark menus. The contrast is quite stark and doesn't result in a very black "black mode."

The updated black mode is more of a true black mode and would fit in on a system with other elements set to dark mode.

Nice: Dark mode in Word now inverts the colors on your document too, not just the menus. In the @office 365 Insiders Beta Channel. pic.twitter.com/WY6w3y2J9V

— Hayden Barnes (@unixterminal) February 8, 2021

Here is the current black mode for comparison:

While the theme is called "black" within Microsoft Word, you can also get it by setting Word to "Use system setting" if your PC is set to dark mode.

We have a guide on how to change the color theme of Office apps if you'd like to try out Word's black mode or other themes.

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