We first saw evidence of a dark theme coming to WhatsApp back in March last year. The Facebook-owned messenger, which boasts of over 1.5 Billion monthly active users as of early 2018, kept dropping hints of the upcoming dark theme all the way until late last year in November. While other apps from Facebook, including Messenger and Instagram, received dark themes on Android, WhatsApp's dark theme was still nowhere to be seen. Then, earlier this year in January, WhatsApp on Android finally received a dark theme on the beta channel. But sadly, there was still no dark theme for the desktop version of the app. Now, it seems like the developers are finally coming around to including a dark theme on the desktop version.

WhatsApp desktop dark theme code

If you've been following our coverage of WhatsApp's elusive dark theme, you'd already know that there's a styling mod for WhatsApp for desktop that themes the desktop client with a dark theme. The mod in question was developed by XDA Member m4heshd, who has now uncovered evidence that suggests that the desktop version could soon get a dark theme officially. In a recent post on our forums, m4heshd shared screenshots of strings of code in the source of the latest WhatsApp desktop build (v0.4.930) that point towards a native dark theme for the messenger.

As you can see in the screenshot above, the native dark theme for WhatsApp for desktop looks a lot like the dark theme we've seen on Android devices. However, since the feature is still in development as of this moment, WhatsApp might make some changes to it before it's released to the public. As of now, there's no official information from WhatsApp regarding the upcoming dark theme for desktop.

Source: XDA Forums