AFAIK Surfinkeys was developped as a step-up from Vimium and cVim. In any case the specific software you enjoy is unimportant, as long as you can enjoy keyboard-centric browsing.
Meanwhile I miss an extension that just lets me define CSS
overrides like Qutebrowser. For me those worked much better and
more consistently as it doesn't try any clever stuff, it just
overwrites some color values in html tags.
I've tried most dark mode extensions for Firefox and
Chrome and uninstalled every one after 15 minutes because they
all have some common edge cases I don't like.
wish it & other web extensions were usable on mainstream mobile browsers! would save power on my oled screen & be a calmer reading experience.
I love this extension on my workstation, but it makes me so sad the place I best need to be able to spread my user agency & improve my limited environment- mobile- is the place where browser makers offer me no control.
I just picked this up a few weeks ago. I have migraines and get extremely light sensitive, and a few years back my sensitivity became strong enough to cause white UIs to give me some major problems.
This extension has been a lifesaver for me already. I'm only overstating it a little bit; not instantly getting a headache on a bright white screen is a major relief.
If you don't use f.lux already give it a shot. I usually have it set to warm colors at all times but there's some cool options to set it by time of day as well
Dark Reader looks better on deluminate's own home page example than deluminate does. Deluminate seems to leave white bars at either side of the main body text. Dark Reader inverts those correctly.
Chrome supports darkening of pages in a rather weird way:
chrome://flags/#enable-force-dark. Then use "enabled with selective inversion of non-image". It works majority of the times, but has some edge cases. It's somewhat annoying as it needs a restart to change the flag.
I still can't believe this policy by Apple. Google and other developers have to literally change their software in order to be able to publish it on appstore.
They are going great lengths to prevent dynamically changing apps.
Also this is one way they can enforce itp and variants on webviews so from their pov, it makes sense I suppose.
Firefox on iOS has the switch accessible easily. Bottom right (hamburger menu) > enable night mode. It has a couple bugs but works fine 95% of the time.
Dark Reader just works almost every time, have been a very happy user for about two years now.
I recommend having it off by default and turning it on when necessary. Occasionally you encounter a site that performs extremely poorly in Dark Reader, it’s just less annoying to opt-in than opt-out in those cases.
If you go to Site list and click on "Invert listed only", you can then have it enabled for a list of sites. To add a site, just click the site's domain on the extension when you're on that website, that website will be added to the list, and dark mode will automatically be enabled for that site.
It works like a whitelist instead of the default "Not invert listed" option being a blacklist of sites to disable it for.
On that second point, I have the opposite preference. When I'm sitting in a dark room I'd rather temporarily have to deal with a buggy dark theme than to temporarily be blinded by a white website.
Regardless of whether you prefer to opt-in or opt-out, it's handy to have a keyboard shortcut set for toggling just the current site. You can do that in chrome://extensions/shortcuts
Tried this last week and ironically had problems on hn of all places. Disabling it on here still messed with the text colors until I retoggled it from the extension.
I will say, however, that NYT looked quite aesthetic in dark mode.
Beware that some sites (redhat.com as an example) which use DDoS appliances can get triggered by Dark Reader. You will start getting "Access Denied" type messages. If this happens, just disable it for the site.
There are very very sites which get triggered by Dark Reader, but Red Hat sites are one of them.
Sadly this extension has a slight negative impact on loading performance, but I don't mind. It's otherwise great and makes reading much easier.
Unfortunately Chrome doesn't granularize it any further. Basically all it needs to do is inject some CSS, and in Chrome permission-speak that is covered under the umbrella of "read and change all your data".
The source is however available so you could inspect it for yourself and install from source:
One thing I wish some of these browser plugins did is cleanly compose with the existing “is the browser in dark mode?” CSS selector. Every one I’ve tried will clobber colors on sites that have supported dark mode. I haven’t checked if Dark Reader works differently.
On my mobile device I prefer the extension "Dark Background and Light Text". IMO it has slightly better results with its static CSS mode, and the settings page loads faster. My device is not fast enough for the dynamic modes of either extension.
Contra: every once in while causes tabs to crash and my laptop battery to deplete. Firefox for iOS offers Night mode, which, except for still-white images, works more stable.
Is it OK not to like Dark Mode for reading and general browsing? I mean, I like Dark Mode in some places (mostly the extremities -- Dock, Menubar, etc) and in games, IDE. I do have dark tone for the IDE but as soon as I'm typing Markdown or Text, I have a lighter version. This is the same for reading -- I like the old brown-ish background with dark texts.
I can't read dark themed stuff at all for any length of time, and my tolerance is getting worse as I get older. More and more sites seem to be going dark by default and many don't offer any way to switch it off.
If there's an exact opposite version of this extension, I'd love to see it. I've even tried looking quite recently, but any search for terms like dark/light theme tend to throw up nothing but results for making things dark, not light.
Tranquility Reader helps a lot, but I'd like something that focused more on colours than style, leaving the page design mostly intact.
Dark Reader actually had a light mode theme option — not sure how well it works on making dark pages light. But I’ve used the light mode with the contrast slider cranked up to make some pages easier to read! Probably worth a shot
Qutebrowser supports custom CSS overrides. For example I have a
CSS file for dark mode that replaces colors in certain html
tags, but you could easily just change the color values for
something lighter.
Of course it's also not perfect as it'll do that on all sites
and qutebrowser isn't everyone's cup of tea.
Human eyes don't have good night vision, we see best in daylight.
Light text on a dark background makes the eye work harder and open wider, since it needs to absorb more light. When this happens, the light letters can bleed into the dark background and cause halation. Our eyes focus better when the iris is narrow.
Additionally, most people are born with some form of astigmatism, a misshaped cornea that blurs vision. For people that have the worst forms of astigmatism, light text on dark backgrounds aggravates the condition. When looking at a light display, the iris closes more, decreasing the effect of the deformed cornea. When using a dark display the iris opens to receive more light and the deformation of the cornea makes halation worse.
On the flip side, dark mode helps with floaters, tiny fibers or spots that appear in a person's vision. These are caused by changes to the fluid in the eye which cause shadows to be cast on the retina. Floaters distort vision in light mode. This condition tends to increase with age.
Also, people with light sensitivity might be better served by a dark background.
Both light and dark mode should be offered for accessibility reasons.
I have found that dark mode works best in low light, 100% contrast (both light and dark) can be harder to read with more eye strain, and reading large amounts of text in dark mode is harder.
I have several eye conditions, some genetic and some age related, which makes dark mode unusable. I tried using Dark Reader for evening web viewing, but the blurred vision and eye strain was too much. Flux has been a better experience for me.
This year I switched to an LG CX 48 as my only display. This is a large OLED screen ("large" is an understatement -- it's the equivalent of a 4x4 grid of 24" 1080p monitors). Because it's OLED, there's some minor risk of burn-in. As one of my measures for mitigating that risk, I use Dark Reader with the contrast turned up. This also happens to look really cool on an OLED with its perfect blacks. There are a few sites that it does a poor job with, and for those I just have it disabled.
I've used 'Dark Background and Light Text' [0] on FF for the past couple years. It's been very helpful with eyestrain. (now 48k users)
It will remember one of 4 options (& disabled) for most sites. Choose any color for 6 options (foreground, bg, link, visited, active, selection). Save $$$ when you shop FOSS.
There are 3 extensions I can't live without: Dark Reader is one of those, the Other two being vimium and ublock origin (Old Reddit Redirect comes close.)
That is why the the Web Extensions update on Safari 14 are useless. It is not porting extensions that is difficult, it is dev dont want to sign up to a $99 / yr account just to publish their browser's extension
76 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 132 ms ] threadI've tried most dark mode extensions for Firefox and Chrome and uninstalled every one after 15 minutes because they all have some common edge cases I don't like.
https://robertheaton.com/2018/07/02/stylish-browser-extensio... https://robertheaton.com/2018/08/16/stylish-is-back-and-you-... https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1472948
I love this extension on my workstation, but it makes me so sad the place I best need to be able to spread my user agency & improve my limited environment- mobile- is the place where browser makers offer me no control.
Dark Reader forever!
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/android/addon/darkreader/
This extension has been a lifesaver for me already. I'm only overstating it a little bit; not instantly getting a headache on a bright white screen is a major relief.
Is Dark Reader better? Why?
I recommend having it off by default and turning it on when necessary. Occasionally you encounter a site that performs extremely poorly in Dark Reader, it’s just less annoying to opt-in than opt-out in those cases.
It works like a whitelist instead of the default "Not invert listed" option being a blacklist of sites to disable it for.
Regardless of whether you prefer to opt-in or opt-out, it's handy to have a keyboard shortcut set for toggling just the current site. You can do that in chrome://extensions/shortcuts
I will say, however, that NYT looked quite aesthetic in dark mode.
For wikipedia I use this theme specifically:
https://github.com/StylishThemes/Wikipedia-Dark
There are very very sites which get triggered by Dark Reader, but Red Hat sites are one of them.
Sadly this extension has a slight negative impact on loading performance, but I don't mind. It's otherwise great and makes reading much easier.
I got this message when I tried to add this extension, everybody comfortable with this?
The source is however available so you could inspect it for yourself and install from source:
https://github.com/darkreader/darkreader
Actually I believe the default mode analyzes the page contents in an attempt to provide a better end result.
It doesn't collect anything, is verified/checked by Mozilla
https://darkreader.org/privacy/
Contra: every once in while causes tabs to crash and my laptop battery to deplete. Firefox for iOS offers Night mode, which, except for still-white images, works more stable.
If there's an exact opposite version of this extension, I'd love to see it. I've even tried looking quite recently, but any search for terms like dark/light theme tend to throw up nothing but results for making things dark, not light.
Tranquility Reader helps a lot, but I'd like something that focused more on colours than style, leaving the page design mostly intact.
Of course it's also not perfect as it'll do that on all sites and qutebrowser isn't everyone's cup of tea.
javascript:(function(){var%20newSS,%20styles='%20{%20background:%20white%20!%20important;%20color:%20black%20!important%20}%20:link,%20:link%20%20{%20color:%20#0000EE%20!important%20}%20:visited,%20:visited%20*%20{%20color:%20#551A8B%20!important%20}';%20if(document.createStyleSheet)%20{%20document.createStyleSheet("javascript:'"+styles+"'");%20}%20else%20{%20newSS=document.createElement('link');%20newSS.rel='stylesheet';%20newSS.href='data:text/css,'+escape(styles);%20document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(newSS);%20}%20})();
Light text on a dark background makes the eye work harder and open wider, since it needs to absorb more light. When this happens, the light letters can bleed into the dark background and cause halation. Our eyes focus better when the iris is narrow.
Additionally, most people are born with some form of astigmatism, a misshaped cornea that blurs vision. For people that have the worst forms of astigmatism, light text on dark backgrounds aggravates the condition. When looking at a light display, the iris closes more, decreasing the effect of the deformed cornea. When using a dark display the iris opens to receive more light and the deformation of the cornea makes halation worse.
On the flip side, dark mode helps with floaters, tiny fibers or spots that appear in a person's vision. These are caused by changes to the fluid in the eye which cause shadows to be cast on the retina. Floaters distort vision in light mode. This condition tends to increase with age.
Also, people with light sensitivity might be better served by a dark background.
Both light and dark mode should be offered for accessibility reasons.
I have found that dark mode works best in low light, 100% contrast (both light and dark) can be harder to read with more eye strain, and reading large amounts of text in dark mode is harder.
I have several eye conditions, some genetic and some age related, which makes dark mode unusable. I tried using Dark Reader for evening web viewing, but the blurred vision and eye strain was too much. Flux has been a better experience for me.
This year I switched to an LG CX 48 as my only display. This is a large OLED screen ("large" is an understatement -- it's the equivalent of a 4x4 grid of 24" 1080p monitors). Because it's OLED, there's some minor risk of burn-in. As one of my measures for mitigating that risk, I use Dark Reader with the contrast turned up. This also happens to look really cool on an OLED with its perfect blacks. There are a few sites that it does a poor job with, and for those I just have it disabled.
It will remember one of 4 options (& disabled) for most sites. Choose any color for 6 options (foreground, bg, link, visited, active, selection). Save $$$ when you shop FOSS.
[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dark-backgrou...
$4.99 for Apple users.
That is why the the Web Extensions update on Safari 14 are useless. It is not porting extensions that is difficult, it is dev dont want to sign up to a $99 / yr account just to publish their browser's extension