HACKER Q&A
📣 unknownaccount

Why is dark mode so bad in browsers?


Is it really too much to ask for a browser to have a dark mode that sets the background to black(#000000) without tons of extensions?

Chrome(ium)-based browsers do have a dark mode which can be enabled in chrome:///flags, sure, and it works generally well but the fatal flaw is that it uses this ugly light gray color for the background instead of black(#000000) which looks 10x better. The only way to get a black background on webpages is using combinations of extensions like “Super Dark Mode” and “Dark Reader” which have an inherent flaw in that they cannot change the ugly gray color hardcoded in chrome that flashes in between page loads. So really the only way to do it would be to edit that gray color in the chromium source code and use a custom build, which is out of reach for most people for obvious reasons.

  👤 unknownaccount Accepted Answer ✓
And don’t even get me started on mobile browsers. On iOS I don’t think there is even a way to get a black background on webpages without shelling out money for an Safari extension like Neo Noir. This seems like a basic feature which should have existed in every browser since the 1990s. It doesnt seem hard to code. It increases contrast ratio for persons with vision disabilities. And it reduces electricity usage when displaying on some screen technologies. I’m baffled why this isn’t a thing already in the year 2022.