Recent development of some new immune checkpoint inhibitors has been particularly successfully in melanoma, but the majority of melanoma patients exhibit resistance. Understanding and targeting the potential underlying mechanism/targets, especially the tumor-intrinsic modulators to convert resistant melanomas to immunotherapy sensitivity will potentially provide a significant improvement in patient outcome. Here, Mi-2β, a chromatin remodeling enzyme was identified as a key melanoma-intrinsic effector regulating the adaptive anti-tumor immune response. Loss of Mi-2β rescued the immune response to immunotherapy in vivo. Mechanistically, targeting Mi-2β induced the adaptive immune response by transcriptionally enhancing expression of a set of IFN-γ-responsive genes including CXCL9, CXCL10 and IRF1. Finally, we developed a Mi-2β-targeted inhibitor Z36-MP5, which specifically and effectively induced a response to immune checkpoint blockades in otherwise resistant melanomas. Our work provides a new insight into the epigenetic regulation in adaptive immune response, and highlights a viable strategy to improve immunotherapies in melanoma.