And `:prefers-color-scheme` has been supported by all major browsers for seven years.

It makes me so angry that they named the CSS function `light-dark` instead of leaving the door open to allowing generic user- or site-specified color schemes. I mean it was right there in all the other mechanisms around this feature, they just had to read and think about why these are structured the way they are, and why "light" and "dark" were always values and not keywords in all of these..:

    - <meta name="color-scheme" content="light dark">
    
    - :root { color-scheme: light dark }

    - @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) { }

    - <picture><source media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)">

.... and then we've got `light-dark()`, the goofy looking dragon hanging out to the side of these majestic, forward-thinking parts of the specification.

Did they not look at the prior art and notice that "one of these things is not like the other?" All the other pieces of this puzzle, conceivably, could have one day had something like `:root { color-scheme: halloween }` or `@media (prefers-color-scheme: supercontrast)` but no, we're just going to cement `light-dark()` as the only two possible color schemes we'd ever want to switch between forever.

I have similar issue with dark mode applied to content - hurts my eyes. I prefer to have window chrome in dark, to make "fade away". The only application which allows me to have my cake and eat it is Firefox: I can run Windows in dark yet read web in light mode.

I wish Windows would steal this feature for the whole OS: I don't want Notepad to use dark for text, but per-app setting usually turns the whole app light.

I’ve been using these for decades:

https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/zap.html

Yeah I can’t do dark mode websites because they leave an after image for some time after reading. So I made a Force Light Mode extension that just applies an inverse to any site that forces dark mode on me. Safari 27 now has some Siri extension builder, maybe it can build it for you.

I have 20/20 but for some reason cannot handle dark mode except for two things, terminal and coding and I cannot do light mode for either of those.

But whether it is my os ui or my phone ui, I feel like I can't distinguish borders and boundaries in the UI as well as I can with light mode.

Dark Reader extension can do that

Probably not the best solution but the 'Midnight lizard' extension (ff/chrome) has a range of light css templates to auto-convert websites to, given adjustable threshold brightness values.

Slows down loading of websites a lot though.

I just noticed that Dark Reader stopped working for me. Turns out I accidentally installed "Dark Mode", a potentially malicious clone that got blocked :/

I'm concerned that these extensions can "read and modify" everything. I can't use that for work.

I like that on Chrome, and while it works on Safari, I prefer Noir there.

Chrome has a built in dark mode that's more performant than extensions.

chrome://flags/#enable-force-dark

Works great 99% of the every time.

AFAIK, its detectable by the web page though

Dark Reader went political - that's an automatic "NO" from me

I use light mode in the day when it’s bright, and dark mode at night when it’s dark. Neither mode is “better” for me, but two things are true for me:

- Dark mode is harder to read when it’s bright out

- Light mode is blindingly bright when I’m in a dark room (and turning the brightness sufficiently low makes everything look washed out.)

My devices change from light mode to dark mode at sunset and it’s basically ideal.

Also it’s nice to just have less artificial light as the sun sets, which makes falling asleep naturally a bit easier.

I find dark mode is better for astigmatism, personally. It also isn't hellish if you have floaters and migraines, unlike light mode.

The preference, either way, is an important accessibility feature.

I don't have any vision problems and still I don't get dark mode. It's harder to read. Maybe it's because I work in a bright room, but even in the evening I don't really see the point of dark mode.

It's good that it exists though. Some people have different work environments or other types of vision problems than astigmatism, and if dark mode works for them supporting it in more places is good.

Maybe we could also have a way to indicate that the user wants high contrast, but that starts becoming a lot of special cases to design for.

I didn’t used to mind “light mode”, but then flat design took over and the midtones and grays that often composed light mode were replaced by huge swaths of stark white and near-white grays which is blinding at normal display brightness and then too low contrast to work well with low display brightness. After a while of that I started to enable dark mode whenever a platform made it available.

If/when flat design goes the way of the dodo and light themes are designed sanely once again I’ll pick them back up.

I don't use it either, and find most website dark modes really difficult to read. The text blurs together or worse, it gets "burned in" to my vision briefly (not sure what that phenomenon is called). I especially dislike the ones that are pitch black instead of the cool grey/dark grey. I was hoping this "Adaptive Dark Mode" announcement was going to adaptively do away with the pitch black dark modes that make it impossible for me to read a website by adapting them to any other color scheme. =P

No, you’re not the only one, I can’t read dark mode, it’s all blurry, makes me squint and gives me a headache. Light colors all day long. Light mode is not a mode - it’s the default.

For me I cannot deal with dark mode in bright environments, but equally it's fairly hard (though less hard) when using light mode in dark environments. It's why Dark Reader has been such a huge quality of life improvement for me.

I used to be a hardcore darkmode user, but after a while it ruined my vision, I think because it's the literal opposite of the real world. Maybe people like dark mode because they keep their screen brightness really high, you just need to lower it and it is by far easier on your eyes. A good light mode theme like Solarized or Flexoki [1] will help, plus now I can retire darkreader making my browser faster and I will stop fighting with the websites' default light theme. I even started using serif font after I didn't really like them on screens, but a font made for screens with good hinting and line weight like Go Mono [2] is really beautiful and easier to read imo, Noto serif is also decent for a proportional. It's time to leave the dark side.

[1]: https://stephango.com/flexoki [2]: https://go.dev/blog/go-fonts#go-mono-fonts

No. It’s stupid. There’s a reason we don’t write white text on black paper. There’s a reason the first Mac showing black text on a white background was such an improvement.

I don’t get the point at all (and don’t want to hear it, I’ve seen the arguments before).

It’s nice it’s there for people who want it but it baffles me it’s constantly treated like the greatest thing ever.

No, After a few minutes of dark mode, I get essentially zebra stripe like migraines.

Yeah same here, the only time I use dark mode is usually when I feel a migraine attack might be coming up (and I get very sensitive to light)

That's why every site should respect the user's light/dark preference when possible. Dark mode vs light mode is very divisive

I use solarized light.

Back in the day (work from office lol) people would always pick on me for that, playfully of course.

No.

Is your astigmatism uncorrectable?

I have the opposite issue. That's why I have my system theme set to dark, and likely you to light, and this has existed for years:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/A...

It's 2026, how does every single website, especially this one, not support this?

My HN is in dark mode, though the honors for that accomplishment go to the duckduck browser. Been reading HN on dark mode a while now (light mode burns me eyes, only way to use HN for me now is with the Duck)

P.S. the Duck browser literally has a universal dark mode setting, I don't recall a site it wasn't able to dark-force darkify for me (language is fun)

There is no downside to having prefers-color-scheme media query set up, even for HN. Too bad still roughly 1 in 4 popular websites support it.

there are a lot of design choices which Hacker News does not support ;)

My Hacker News extension [1] re-applies the colours from HN's news.css (including the mistakes in it ^_^) using CSS variables [2] to make it themeable, and adds a default dark mode with an OLED variant, and a way to apply your own theme CSS.

Personally I'm using an HN version of Twitter's Dim theme [3]

[1] https://soitis.dev/comments-owl-for-hacker-news

[2] https://github.com/insin/comments-owl-for-hacker-news/blob/m...

[3] https://imgur.com/a/comments-owl-hacker-news-dark-modes-iFSk...

Not sure if you would like my dark mode modifications to HN, but here are my CSS[1] and JS[2] modifications.

Javascript: https://pastebin.com/50EUfktL CSS: https://pastebin.com/nzEhxxBY

The only chrome extension I have is to make hackernews support dark mode. Love having it

I do appreciate how minimalist hackernews tries to be, but I think respecting the operating system's theme can be considered very minimalist

This feature works well on Hacker News, just trying it on the beta.

I use Stylus to apply a dark theme to HN, and much prefer it. https://i.imgur.com/USbXXEK.png

Dark mode and some small improvements for mobile usage would be amazing and don't seem at all hard. It's pretty amazing HN hasn't implemented them.

If anyone here is open to using the Stylus extension, I've re-shared a dark theme for Hacker News recently and it's been lovely. [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49686639

No thanks. When you are my age you will understand.

I have no idea why all the fucking vibed websites that swank around the web these days are unable to do a simple thing:

  * Have one or more "themes" with dark and light variants
  * Query the browser for a preference of light or dark and offer the default theme with the probed variant.

There is also the rather wider issue of accessibility in general. I happen to be an older bloke with astigmatism and rapidly worsening ... fucked up focussing and glasses and that. I'm lucky to have both eyes and decent colour perception and general all around acuity (for a given value of acuity).

It's 2026 FFS. Why on earth is this even being discussed as an issue? We have all these cool vibed efforts that can't even be bothered with simple basics.

They’re now formally interested in doing one but, I imagine, not very urgently relative to flag reasons and other stuff.

I use a chrome plugin precisely for this and I can confirm - my eyes hurt less

https://hcker.news was originally made so i didnt solar flash my kid in bed while they were sleeping

it now has many dark themes, bloomberg is my favorite.

I got neurological lyme disease a few years ago. Anything with a white background was like a VGA cable being half plugged in.

The fact that this website wasn’t capable of dark mode made me create a CSS overlay on desktop.

I am back to somewhat normal now with my eyes, but I feel really bad for anyone in the same position.

I know that the current exact HN is magic, but come on. There is CSS to detect the system’s theme. There is no need to create a button or anything.

Please no. Dark mode is extremely difficult to read for me.

I have been using a Safari extension called Noir on iPhone for years. Works great on HN and most sites. I have it set to a pure black for HN. Easy to disable per-site when it fails. It syncs to my phone's dark mode. I also read in bed as you've described, with Night Shift turned on and very low brightness. It's great.

   filter: invert() hue-rotate(180deg)

For images. Works better for illustrations to get the vibe of the original colours than actual photographs.

The opt outs mentioned in the article, like

    color-scheme: light dark;

should be sufficient to enable dark mode for users who prefer dark mode.

For icons, ideally they’d be SVGs controlled by currentColor, but that may not be feasible or convenient depending on your setup.

Please do not use invert; it messes up subpixel rendering, making text ugly and harder to read.

You're out of luck if, like me, you have a problem with astigmatic halation. All the cool kids use dark mode.

iOS since 26 has been presenting parts of the system in dark mode despite having the device set to light only. One of the ‘best’ is that launcher groups switch to dark background, but they forgot to switch the text colour, so app names are unreadable. I had hoped iOS 27 would fix it, but no, so I'm switching to Android.

>cost a few bucks

Sounds like the Noir dev is going to be the next victim of Apple's Sherlocking.

I'd be curious to know more about this. Dark Reader, at least on Firefox, is a recommended addon, which means it gets additional scrutiny by Mozilla. I do agree though that if it does additional web requests, it seems fishy. Do you have any details on where these requests go to or how you found them?

I wish Firefox would step it up and come up with a built-in browser feature for making websites dark. (though they have forced "high contrast" colors, but that's not the same and they do look crunchy.) People love to say "just get an addon" for this or that, but they just don't work that well, and it's not that great having to rely on some random addon developers for something that'd be adjusting every website that you visit.

I use stylus on firefox, you can search for styles or write them yourself. I often write dark mode for websites, I'm using a dark mode for hn right now. Also "large mode", it's ridiculous having websites on a 32" limited to 900 px

Bad: it’s tracking you

Worse: it’s attacking you

Worst: it’s attacking someone else as you

Please! I don't use Safari so this won't help me, but switching back to HN from other mostly dark themed sites hurts my eyes :(

> I look forward to the day I can finally remove "manual" dark mode support and just leave it up to the browser.

Today it is!

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/V...

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/A...

I guess if you truly don’t care about it sure, this is probably going to be an improvement, but if you are willing to invest even a bit of effort I strongly think you’d want to decide how your website looks like in dark mode.

Safari Technology Preview is primarily for testing the latest WebKit features, rather than previewing every upcoming Safari feature.

Safari Beta is generally what you'd want to use to test features coming to the next Safari release.

And yes, features appearing in Technology Preview aren't necessarily guaranteed to ship in Safari.

Some pages break badly... like google docs and some QR codes

Modern CSS has some simpler mechanisms to deal with the light/dark dichotomy now. I translated a blog to support dark mode recently and it wasn't that difficult. The two sticking points were <code> and picking foreground colors that didn't blend in, and the github icon.

The other was Github's icon. But `filter: invert(1)` does a pretty decent job of handling that as long as the icons are black and white.

It’s not. The feature is implemented deep within WebKit so it makes sense to be on this blog.

> It’s precisely because Adaptive Dark Mode is happening deep within the WebKit browser engine that we are able to find creative ways to solve the most complex challenges, apply the transformations with great speed and power efficiency

It is optin

they really should, it's the main reason behind many users not being on an "evergreen" browser

I wonder when they will separate other browsers on iOS from clusterfxxk Safari is

I agree. For example, my blog uses #15202b background (which is pretty blue), and text color #dad8d8, and I find it quite good. https://blog.velocifyer.com/

I use the Dark Reader extension's brightness and contrast settings to fix this often, or other times I use the Stylus extension and write custom CSS.

1. It's opt-in. The user is choosing the occasional broken site over light themes.

2. The site can always provide their own dark theme if the automatic one is broken.

There's a mode like this in an Android Chrome fork called Cromite that works surprisingly well. Most of the other options do suck though.

>will punish the developers of the web as if they did something wrong here

Yes, developers can solve this by simply implementing dark mode.

They say it can’t be detected but give it time and someone will figure out some signal that gives it away.

Its truly arrogant of website authors to think they should have the final say on how users view the site on their browser.

Not true. Also 20 years ago we were still using 14” CRTs.

People had filters on their monitors 20 years ago

On the contrary, screw you whoever led it. Who even wants authored styles nowadays.

> what a nightmare, now your website will look different to different people

That's what the web has always been. People don't all have the same display types, the same subpixel layouts, the same display sizes, the same DPIs, the same fonts, the same zoom levels... People use reader modes, global restyling extensions, per-site custom style sheets, full screen magnifiers, bounded/partial magnifiers, screen readers, OS high-contrast modes... the web has never been a fixed canvas that you get to paint on and then hand to users.

I like to think of it as a gentle encouragement to finally implement prefers-color-scheme in web applications.

(I say this as a designer who has spent countless hours on dark-mode palettes as well as someone who has the automatic circadian toggle enabled everywhere.)

disagree. the web specifically is built as a dynamic medium for consumption. The fluid nature is the point. Yes, it is harder for developers to force a consistent experience, but as a professional web dev, we should not treat the web as a fixed medium.

Even as a developer I'm all for it, go even harder. We may eventually reach the promised land where the user agent defines so much of the final appearance things like "pixel perfect design" or beating standard controls into within an inch of their lives to fit some design system are a thing of the past.

Re: web developer

> The HTML <meta name="color-scheme" content="light only"> tag lets browsers know that 1) this page supports light mode and 2) should only be displayed in light mode.

As a web developer, all you have to do is support `:prefers-color-scheme`.

Wait until you learn I can change the font size and even override the site CSS on my own machine!

Browsers already intentionally lie all the time, and have had to for years, because fingerprinting and tracking by various ad networks and bad actors has been rampant.

This is more or less unavoidable to avoid breaking poorly-architected front-ends that rely on styling to handle logic.

Browsers lie all the time. Browsers also prevent sites from getting the color of a link because visited links can be shown in a different color and this can be used by the site to tell if a user has ever visited a link.

Don’t you love it when browsers lie to websites to enhance the user’s privacy.

It's the user's agent

One less thing to fingerprint.

> So… the browser is now intentionally lying now. Ain’t that great.

To the server. I'm 100% behind this. The unholy amount of control websites have over our web browser should go down, not up.

Wikipedia already supports dark mode as a feature of the default Vector 2022 skin.[0]

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dark_mode

Wikipedia allows you to write any custom CSS. In 2012/2013 when Facebook IPO’ed and was the cool thing I made a user CSS that made Wikipedia look like Facebook.

Browsers are user-agents, not website-agents. By way of example, if a website shows ads or does tracking, I will absolutely alter it to my liking.

I and my browser are allowed to do whatever I want with the data that is posted on the public internet.