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Hi, I’m Sarah Price. If you’ve ever checked your email in the dark, you know how blinding
your bright white computer screen can be. Gmail has a number of theme options, like
Dark, that help a little bit. But Gmail themes won’t help you when you need to make a search
on Google or visit another website. Today I’m going to show you how to spare your
eyes when you work in a low-light environment by inverting colors in Google Chrome.
First you will want to make sure you are using Google Chrome version 19 or higher. Click
the wrench and choose “About Google Chrome” to check your version number. If you don’t
have Google Chrome yet, you can download it at www.google.com/chrome.
Next, visit the Chrome Web Store. Search for High Contrast from Google Accessibility and
click “Add to Chrome.” Review the permissions and click “Add.” High Contrast should
now be installed. Let’s see how it works!
From your Gmail inbox, click the High Contrast button on your toolbar. You’ll see a number
of options. Let’s start with “inverted color.” Inverted color will turn white into
black, black into white, and colors into their opposites. Here’s what it looks like. You
can combine the High Contrast extension with other Gmail themes, although the color names
might look funny. The extension works best with themes using the light overlay -- they
usually have white in the bottom corner, but with the extension on, they have black. I
really like the Android theme with inverted colors. Here’s what it looks like. If you
don’t like the colors, you can also try “inverted grayscale,” which also turns
colors into shades of gray.
Now here’s what’s really cool. In the extension, set your preferred scheme as the
default. Now, when you visit a new website, the colors will automatically be adjusted.
If you visit a site that already has inverted colors, just use the extension to change the
scheme for that site. Google Chrome remembers your preferences for each site and will automatically
adjust the colors the next time you visit.
I’ve included links to the extension in the Chrome Web Store in the description of
this video. I hope you enjoyed this tip. Thanks for watching.