I often use the reader mode in Firefox. Although it is not the same as a dark mode for a whole webpage, it is pretty good at removing clutter and making a web text easier to read. With the added bonus that there are no permissions involved (although I suspect the latter are absolutely necessary for the addon to work, without sharing data to 3rd parties).<p>It is even possible to save a bookmark in Firefox with reader mode already enabled, by adding about:reader?url= before the url.
I tried this a few months back, I liked the visual effect and the configuration flexibility, but it ate at my CPU waaay too much. Anybody else have this? Was meaning to look for a lightweight alternative. Maybe I'll try this extension again to see if it's still a resource hog.<p>Note: I'm on Firefox.
On Firefox, I love the <i>Owl - Dark Background</i> app.<p><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/owl" rel="nofollow">https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/owl</a>
Does anyone actually prefer reading text on a bright background? If so, what are your reasons? For me, the choice is obvious to the point that I'm often annoyed at the lengths I need to go to in order to browse the web comfortably. I feel like we should have moved to the sane default of dark-themed UI ages ago.
I'm almost blind (legally), and this is the first extension I found that PERFECTLY fixes the contrast so I don't need 20-point font zoom to be able to read it. I have tried dozens of FF extensions to adjust contrast, dark theme, etc... none have worked this well.<p>I wonder if the creator is a fan of<p><a href="https://contrastrebellion.com/" rel="nofollow">https://contrastrebellion.com/</a><p>It
Just
Works!<p>I'm buying this tonight. Thank-you very much.
I've been using this for a few weeks and overall I'm happy with it.
I do find that some complex web apps like gmaps or gmail slow down with this extension enabled. Particularly so in Firefox.
I use it daily in conjunction with f.lux and its been an essential combination for a smooth transition to late-night working/surfing/reading.<p>Specifically, after trying similar extensions, this one is the best. Its css rules fit perfectly for most of the websites which I visit.
I've never bought anything so fast. $7 for the safari extension sounds like a lot, but for how much time I spend on the web and how glaringly white most pages are when OS X has done a good job with Dark Mode, it's well worth the price.
I’ve also written a similar addon, although much simpler, using static css filters:<p><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dark-mode-night-reader/hmafjphdklmdjfcnljjeonfpgafanjjc?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dark-mode-night-re...</a><p><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dark-mode-night-reader/" rel="nofollow">https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dark-mode-nig...</a><p><a href="https://gitlab.com/o9000/darken" rel="nofollow">https://gitlab.com/o9000/darken</a><p>It has 4 presets that can be configured per domain.<p>I’ve added by hand rules to fix inverted images on some popular websites. YouTube is a pain to maintain, they keep changing their css every couple of months.<p>The code is simple enough to review even for someone not familiar with JS. And you can download it and load it as a local extension if you’re worried about the permission.<p>I’ve only tested it under Linux, I don’t use anything else. But some users tell me it works under Windows too.
Dark Background and Light Text is great also ...<p><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dark-background-light-text/" rel="nofollow">https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dark-backgrou...</a><p>Fully customizable so you can don't have to go full black/white, you can copy and dark theme you like and use that as a default.
An extension that's become as important to me as uBO. Discovered this only a couple of months ago thanks to a random comment from someone here on HN. I'd previously been using another extension that did the same thing, but poorly.<p>HN now looks like an old school amber monitor, and its default rules get 9 out of 10 sites spot on, with perfect contrast. Unlike other similar addons seems able to leave the right highlight and banner colours alone. If some rare site doesn't work well with the defaults you can tune individually or even add custom css for that site only. The few times I browse without it my middle-aged eyes are instantly resenting the excessive whiteness.<p>So I have to thank you, a lot, for your attention to detail with this. I hope you receive lots and lots of donations. :)<p>The only negative I find is it's sometimes <i>very</i> greedy with CPU, especially if you're switching between a few tabs a lot.
I'm a big fan of dark mode, particularly because I was of the impression that it was easier on the eyes.<p>Turns our, it's not so black and white...<p>In a study from the 1980s:
> However, most studies have shown that dark characters on a light background are superior to light characters on a dark background (when the refresh rate is fairly high). For example, Bauer and Cavonius (1980) found that participants were 26% more accurate in reading text when they read it with dark characters on a light background.
Reference: Bauer, D., & Cavonius, C., R. (1980)<p>So perhaps dark mode actually puts more strain on the eyes? At least when the user is not in a dark room.<p>Very interested to hear about similar research done in this area.<p>Further reading here: <a href="https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/53268/22606" rel="nofollow">https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/53268/22606</a>
How can I trust that this extension, which has access to every page I visit, doesn't steal my data? How can I trust that if someone else takes over the project and releases an update, that my data is still secure?<p>Looks great, but I'm just so skeptical of browser extensions now.
I have used this extension for the past few months, and I couldn't be more pleased, it takes a huge strain away from my eyes. Highly recommend! And thanks to the author (cheers)
I use this extension on both Firefox and Chrome. I sometimes disable it on some sites just because I'm too used to their original design like Google, but it works nicely on a number of sites. We needed something to override the color scheme of an internal instance of Confluence / BitBucket and I found this plugin and it worked out well, at least 2 other team members use it after I suggested it.
This looks to have a more polished GUI than Dark Background and Light Text (on Firefox, <i>particularly</i> on mobile), but I'm not sure it offers the same flexibility of multiple ways to achieve color changes. I've run into a few sites where one method didn't work well but another did and having all that built in is handy.
Really awesome extension. I am just waiting for the developer to fix Dark Reader breaking sVim link hinting on Safari. It makes link hints unreadable and thus I can't use the extension yet although I really wish I could.<p>A hotkey to turn on/off the dark mode is also coming soon and with that the extension will be perfect.
I'd love to have the dark theming off by default, and enable it on a per-site basis. I prefer black-on-white, but there are some sites that benefit from being the other way around. Currently, I have to basically disable theming for every website except the ones I want darkened, which is a bit inefficient, or turn the extension off completely.<p>Also, since Safari users have to pay for the app, I wonder if it's possible to add some Safari-specific features. I'd really love iCloud sync to keep my custom site theme settings across my Macs. I'm not actually sure to what extent this is possible with apps that provide extensions to Safari, but some minor value-add like that could be nice.
This is really neat! Have left it going all day and it’s quite an improvement.<p>That said, what it’s really done for me is remind me of how much I miss Nocturne: <a href="https://github.com/strider72/blacktree-nocturne" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/strider72/blacktree-nocturne</a> (but originally from Blacktree, the original publisher of Quicksilver). Even the Github version linked there is long abandoned, so hard to try on for yourself—but the monochrome inverted night mode was far and away the best late night coding environment I’ve tested my eyes on.
How long will it likely be until the automatic dark mode toggling is available in Chrome/Firefox? I'm not a fan of Safari.<p>Does it require Chrome and Firefox to implement <i>prefers-color-scheme</i> first?
This extension so far is neat to try with the day to day sites I visit.<p>The security settings do seem to be concerning, but I'm not sure if it's due to how much Firefox, Safari and Chrome have locked down their worlds.<p>Edit: One unintended side effect is copying and pasting text into an email (like an address from a google search) copies the text with a black background. I could do a plaintext copy, but it would be nice if text was copied in the original formatting if possible.
1994: trust the browser for presentation<p>1997: geez the browser makes some dull or terrible decisions about presentation and we want to control our site's presentation<p>2005: OK but semantic web and CSS tho'<p>2013: JavaScript all the things!<p>2015: whoever thought the semantic web was a decent idea, the browser is THE VM, CSS is teh sux0rs, when can I just treat it like a compile target like every other kind of development<p>2018: oh hai what if we invented some way to let users control how they see the content of a website
Since there's quite a few of these dark mode extensions with very variable features and compatibility/robustness, I feel like there's space for a comparison chart type thing. With side by side screenshots of how they handle certain websites and how they influence performance (that might be tricky). If someone want's to steal that idea go ahead, otherwise I might whip something up somewhere over the next weeks.
A question for anyone that knows. With this extension I like to keep everything in light mode with Brightness, Contrast and Sepia off, and Greyscale to 100%. While I like dark mode on macOS all the time I don't really like the web content on dark mode, but with this greyscale setup I feel my eyes relax while keeping images in color in the content. Long term is this setup good or bad for the eyes?
My late night tired eyes, thank you - now I can browse without waking my partner :)<p>The white sheet of paper metaphor of black on white text is to my sensitive eyes really a shining bright light in my face - I always try to reverse, invert, darken to white on black text - but black borders and black bars ( android buttons grrr ) then annoying flip to white !<p>Many thanks this is really good.
Been using using it for a couple month (on chrome), very happy with it. The only thing I wish would be for the the "theme preference" (sepia, contrast etc.) to be on a website per website basis. I don't have the same needs on say HackerNews and Google Maps
Been using this for months (in Chrome) and mostly it's great. My few gripes are:
-- Google Sheets will put text in light grey instead of black
-- The CPU usage shoots up a bit now and then
-- Sometimes I see a website flicker in white for a moment first
I seriously <i>just</i> started using this extension a few days ago, after getting tired of toggling my Chromebook's invert colors setting on and off several times a night.<p>Thanks for building a great extension! I plan on keeping this installed for a long time :)
I purchased and like the Dark Reader Safari extension (despite already having the paid Dark Mode extension).<p>Thank you and kudos.<p>My only question is with the promotion of a paid Safari extension whether the developer is concerned about a possible trademark infringement suit.
I always found managing all my Stylus/Stylish styles too cumbersome and then I found this a while ago. Instantly donated. It's amazing.<p>The only gripe I have is that it is a biiit heavy on the resources.
I like it, but in permissions it says:
"This add-on can: Access your data for all websites"<p>This doesn't sound good, I wouldn't like to allow an extension to access my data in bank websites.
On firefox, when you're turning off dark mode, you have to do it individually for each open tab. That is painful. It'll be good if that toggle is global.
You guys might like the app I've been working on - Polar:<p><a href="https://getpolarized.io/" rel="nofollow">https://getpolarized.io/</a><p>It's a document repository for caching HTML content offline, managing PDFs, annotating and creating flashcards on the documents you're managing.<p>We looked at adding dark mode but it didn't work exactly like I would have hoped so I'm going to take a look at this extension and see if they used any tricks I didn't think of.
i'm nearly incapable of reading light-text-on-dark-background (i get visual auras and nausea). can this extension be used selectively to invert sites that are naturally dark ?<p>from the github:<p>> This extension inverts brightness of web pages<p>i guess a related question is can it be activated for individual pages (as opposed to for-all-pages)
i made a similar extension some years ago -- it tries to be fast and injects very little code. i'm curious to know how the performance compares:<p><a href="https://github.com/conceptualspace/nightlight" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/conceptualspace/nightlight</a>
using it right now, have been for a while :) sadly certain sites with lots of dynamic content or tabular data (zendesk comes to mind) chokes the browser, i have to turn off the dynamic mode which imho is the best feature of the plugin.
With dark sites coming back en vogue with and even entire blogging platforms like After Dark[0] now available is the 90's all over again. Hopefully these new sites eschew the mistakes we've made harvesting data in the past.<p>[0] <a href="https://after-dark.habd.as" rel="nofollow">https://after-dark.habd.as</a>
While it is nice, there are more lightweight and snappy ways to achieve a dark background (or desirable styles in general) -- such as setting a global CSS, using built-in color overriding (at least in FF it's available, along with font overriding), using web browsers that don't apply CSS. Some people even use system-wide color inversion. Each method has its pros and cons though.<p>Stylus is one of the handy FF extensions, which allows to switch between CSS themes quickly/easily.