Dark Reader

What hackers pick instead

• Noir Safari extensionRecommended for automatically darkening websites in Safari, including Hacker News, and for working reliably on OLED screens. Some pages stay light when their authors opt out of darkening.7recommend

Every quote

The 40 most detailed of 63 comments. Each links to the original.

1. Dark Reader works on all sites (it's configurable) and it only scrambles a few sites that react poorly to it.

   Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Show HN: Dark Hacker News”

2. If you use the dark reader web extension you can adjust the brightness and contrast to your liking.

   Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Six Levels of Dark Mode”

3. I have Dark Reader on by default for all websites and only disable it when it activly breaks a site

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Dark Mode Sucks”

4. Firefox desktop and mobile let you install addons like https://darkreader.org/ which work great.

   Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Ask HN: How can I browse HN in dark mode?”

5. the black and white and orange theme I get from dark reader is great, actually looks good, even

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Light Mode InFFFFFFlation”

6. Dark Reader's slowness primarily stems from its auto-detection of pages that need darkening.

   Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Ask HN: How can I browse HN in dark mode?”

7. Otherwise (one of the many darkmode extensions) "Dark Reader" is available for Safari

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Ask HN: Dark Mode for HN is overdue”

8. Dark Reader can force its own dark theme even if the site doesn't provide one

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Blue light filters don't work”

9. Some sites look terrible with any Dark Reader settings, but yours looks fine.

   Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “Dark Mode Sucks”

10. you can have dark mode on every website on iOS Safari with Dark Reader

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27”

11. I use Dark Reader on my Firefox Mobile and on any of my pc browsers.

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Ask HN: How can I browse HN in dark mode?”

12. you remain at risk of upstream's supply chain being compromised

    Mixed · Jan 2026 · in “On Getting Hacked”

13. fixes both the scrollbar and the general color scheme

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Students Are Being Treated Like Guinea Pigs: Inside an AI-Powered Private School”

14. does the same thing on desktop Firefox/Chrome/etc.

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Blue light filters don't work”

15. dark-ify pages that don't support dark mode

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Six Levels of Dark Mode”

16. Automagic dark mode on every site

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Ask HN: Dark Mode for HN is overdue”

17. Somehow this caused a memory leak, and one could watch the page slowly consume GBs of memory.

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “PC Gamer Recommends RSS Readers in a 37MB Article That Just Keeps Downloading”

18. flashing lights at the end seem to be mostly becauseo f darkreader extension

    Criticizes · Nov 2025 · in “Gemini 3”

19. Dark Reader, often recommended, is very slow, especially on old hardware.

    Criticizes · Sep 2026 · in “Ask HN: How can I browse HN in dark mode?”

20. it shows the light interface for 5 to 10 seconds before switching to dark

    Criticizes · Oct 2026 · in “Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please? (2026)”

21. DarkReader is borked and turning it off on the pages isn't much better.

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “FVWM-95 (2001)”

22. Dark Reader mutilates the rendered output, but only certain tiles.

    Criticizes · Nov 2025 · in “Show HN: A CSS-Only Terrain Generator”

23. Dark Reader made this website unintentionally run on hard mode

    Criticizes · Aug 2026 · in “typ.ing”

24. Allow access to everything on all websites? Absolutely not.

    Criticizes · Nov 2025 · in “Ask HN: Dark Mode for HN is overdue”

25. Permissions: Literally everything

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “Would HN Accept PRs?”

26. Dark Reader froze up (uncommon)

    Criticizes · May 2026 · in “Using Kagi Search with Low Vision”

27. dark reader bricks the website

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “LinkedIn uses 2.4 GB RAM across two tabs”

28. Darkreader plus 150-200% zoom and you have something pretty usable on hidpi displays.

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Ask HN: Dark Mode for HN is overdue”

29. which usually breaks sites' colours, but this time it actually fixes the site

    Mixed · Feb 2026 · in “Qwen3.5: Towards Native Multimodal Agents”

30. I use the Dark Reader extension everywhere and when that doesn't cut it

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Light Mode InFFFFFFlation”

31. I'd recommend just using dark reader or writing a simple user-script

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Ask HN: Why No Dark Mode?”

32. community-provided solutions to a real problem that many people have

    Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “Dark Mode Sucks”

33. I have found that Dark Reader works much better than this.

    Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please? (2026)”

34. I use it to keep from getting flashbanged by my monitor.

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Zero-Downtime Deployments with Docker Compose – No Kubernetes Required”

35. extensions such as dark reader allowed for mass adoption

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “LinkedIn uses 2.4 GB RAM across two tabs”

36. Turning on my Dark Reader extension helped a little bit

    Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “More Mac malware from Google search”

37. grammarly, 1password, and darkreader were the big ones

    Mixed · Jul 2026 · in “Road to Elm 1.0”

38. Dark Reader extension works great for dark mode

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Would HN Accept PRs?”

39. Other mainstays: cookie deleters, Dark Reader

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Ask HN: Which web browser are you using and why?”

40. Why not install Dark Reader in your browser

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “Ask HN: Has HN considered adding dark mode?”