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The latest Windows 11 preview builds include an early glimpse at renewed work to add dark mode in more areas of the system, starting with File Explorer.
It's finally happening. After more than six years since it was last updated, Microsoft looks to be making new progress towards finishing dark mode on Windows 11. Ever since dark mode debuted on Windows in 2016, it's been embarrassingly incomplete with common UI interfaces still brightly colored when dark mode is enabled.
That looks to finally be changing, as the latest Windows 11 preview builds include an early glimpse at some newly themed dark interfaces in the File Explorer. First spotted by Phantomofearth on X, the latest builds include a hidden dark mode for the file copy window, file deletion prompt, and file permissions popup window.
As you can see in the screenshot below, we can see that when dark mode is now enabled, these UI surfaces are themed correctly. The window itself, as well as buttons are themed with a dark grey colorway to match to the rest of the File Explorer.
The file copy window is finally getting a dark theme.
(Image credit: Windows Central)
It's a small amount of progress, but any progress is worth celebrating when there's been no progress at all for over half a decade. I still can't fathom why Microsoft thought it was okay to abandon dark mode in its incomplete state on Windows 10 and Windows 11. Why it's taken them so long to finally get back on track is a mystery.
Hopefully this early look isn't the only work we're going to see from Microsoft when it comes to dark mode on Windows 11. There's still a lot of legacy UI surfaces that need dark mode treatment, including the Run dialog, Registry Editor, Group Policy, and many more. There's no excuse to not have these parts of the OS themed dark too when dark mode is enabled in 2025.
Other platforms have had a complete dark mode for a long time. When it arrived on macOS a number of years ago, it was a complete system-wide theme that applied to all in-box apps and UI surfaces. It's the same story on Chrome OS, and iPadOS. It's only Windows that has failed to ship a complete system wide dark mode for almost a decade.
This is a shipping interface on Windows 11 today.
(Image credit: Future)
Microsoft is yet to officially announce these new dark mode interfaces in File Explorer, which hopefully means there's more work to be done and it's too early for the company to talk about it yet. Perhaps these dark mode interfaces will be timed for the 25H2 release later this year as an incentive for users to upgrade to the latest release. I know I would for this alone.
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