Tesla Christmas Mode turns your Tesla’s display into a winter wonderland—kind of. It’s an Easter egg feature that’s a little gimmicky, but sure to excite children and Christmas fanatics all around.

Tesla’s Christmas Mode—officially known as Santa Mode—makes your touchscreen display Christmas-themed with music and animations.
Santa Mode comes standard with all Tesla vehicles.
You can run Santa Mode indefinitely during the Christmas season without draining battery.

What is Tesla Christmas mode?

Tesla’s Santa Mode is a software setting that makes your display—and some audio features—Christmas-themed. With the push of a button, you can turn your Tesla into a holiday display, complete with Christmas music and a dazzling coordinated light show from your car.

On your Tesla’s display, your Tesla will typically appear as a car. But with Santa Mode, your car will appear as Santa and his sleigh, pulled by two reindeer, and with presents in the back. Other cars on your display will appear as reindeer, the roads in your display will be snowy, and snow will be falling.

For added entertainment and fun, the reindeer pulling Santa’s sleigh will speed up when you drive faster and slow down to a trot when you slow down. The reindeers’ collars will flash red when you use your turn signals (the collar on the left reindeer flashes when you use your left turn signal and vice versa for the right).

Our favorite part of Santa Mode is that instead of playing a clicking sound when you turn on your turn signals, your Tesla will play the sound of sleigh bells. Seriously, is there any better way to get into the Christmas spirit?!

But it gets even better. You can use the open-source software that Tesla enabled, called

xLights

, to create your own Christmas mode show! You can even use xLights to view Tesla Christmas Mode shows created by other drivers, and download them for your own vehicle.

Some Christmas Mode light shows, including the pre-loaded show that Tesla sent out to its drivers, might involve the movement of doors, mirrors, or other physical components on your car. If you drive a Model X, you’ll see the gull wings start to move with the music.

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How to turn on Tesla Christmas mode

Accessing Christmas mode is pretty easy. Just follow these steps!

Open the Toy Box software

Navigate to “Select light show”

Exit your vehicle (and make sure everyone else does, too—it’s going to get really loud in there)

Make sure there’s plenty of space for any moving parts in the light show

Watch and enjoy!

Too many steps for your liking? Activate Santa Mode with voice command by saying “Ho! Ho! Ho!” Chuck Berry’s rendition of “Run, Rudolph, Run!” will play to commemorate the activation. (Be cautious, the song plays pretty loudly—and you can’t adjust the volume while it plays!)

You can use the same process with the command “Ho! Ho! Ho! Not Funny,” and the song “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” will play, instead.

When you’re ready to turn Santa Mode off, you can return to Apps > Toy Box and select Santa Mode once more to turn it off. Or, turn it off by the voice command, “Turn Santa Mode Off.”

How long can you leave Tesla Santa Mode on?

Since it’s simply a visual/audio feature in your Tesla, Santa Mode can be run indefinitely! But we recommend turning it off after the Christmas season. You don’t want to be the Tesla version of someone who leaves their lights up all year, right?

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Which Teslas have Christmas mode?

Tesla made Santa Mode available on all

Model S

vehicles, all 2021 and newer

Model X

, and

Model 3

and

Model Y

of any year. This delightful mode came out as an automatic over-the-air software update, which included the pre-loaded Carol of the Bells light show.

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