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I know there are several options for forcing dark mode on various sites such as userContent.css in Firefox and the Dark Reader extension. However, some browsers such as Brave and Bromite have a built-in version of this feature.

It would be great for Orion to have this built-in "dark mode" for any site so that we can be sure extensions aren't spying on us or doing other nefarious things with our data since they require expanded access to work.

    I use brave daily, but I didn't see any dark mode built into it. Can you provide any screenshots or links to the source of this?

      It's a feature in Chromium (and therefore in Brave). Look at chrome://flags and search for Dark Mode.

      • Vlad replied to this.

        pteroknob Which dark mode option from the offered works best?

        What if the site already has dark mode because your system is set to dark mode - does it invert it?

          At this moment, I think that the Dark Reader plugin works best because it has been around long enough to collect support for lots of edge cases identified by user feedback. I am not comfortable with giving a plugin that much access. Having built-in support in Orion feels safer and more contained.

          As to how dark modes should work, I think that the best tools look at the applied/rendered background colors and figure out if they exist within a range of "dark" or "light" hues. Then, use that determination to decide if it should invert or not. It's certainly not an exact science. However, more and more sites are providing dark modes and using detection of OS settings to determine what to do. This feature could perhaps detect if the site is doing that as well and then react accordingly.

          • Vlad replied to this.

            pteroknob If you can find a good scrip that applies dark mode to sites, please link here and we can try it.

              8 days later

              Using specifically "Enabled with selective inversion of non-image elements" has given me the best dark mode I have ever used. Does a great job of detecting existing dark modes, and in what seems to be an instant (+100 points for no "flash" like what all the dark mode extensions do). Every now and then certain layered images will trip it up on some websites though. If something akin to this could be implemented in Orion with the ability to manually disable it for certain websites it would be a perfect solution.

                GreyAsteroid I was looking into this and it seems this functionality is built into Blink itself which would explain it's robustness compared to the approach by extensions but also might make a similar approach for Orion a bit tricky.

                • Vlad replied to this.

                  Vlad Like @pteroknob mentioned I think one of the big advantages of the Blink implementation is its selective inversion. Using the script you linked causes issues for sites like Amazon for example that have a dark navbar and footer which just become white since they're mindlessly inverted. There are also issues with some colors just becoming different colors because of this.

                  I also don't see why a script wouldn't be able to achieve this compared to something built into browser engine itself besides speed. I looked around and couldn't really find any scripts that accomplish this nearly as well as the Chromium option.

                  When I was looking at the Chromium/Blink source I saw some of the code for this but a lot of it's spread out between so many different files it gave me a headache trying to make sense of it.

                  • Vlad replied to this.

                    GreyAsteroid OK thanks for looking. If you are able to modify our script to have satisfactory results, we would include it.

                      3 months later

                      Vlad Any progress on this? I would love to use Orion as my main browser, but I simply cannot live without dynamic dark mode, like from Dark Reader and Noir.

                      • Vlad replied to this.

                        Vlad It doesn’t work well with Orion. Whitelisting doesn’t work and compatibility is flaky.

                        • Vlad replied to this.

                          aries Have you tried Orion's dark mode script from this thread?

                            Vlad As far as I can tell, it’s not automatic, like Dark Reader or Noir, so it doesn’t fit my needs.

                              4 days later

                              @Vlad I wanted to add that this is only on iOS/iPadOS. On the MacOS version of Orion, Dark Reader seems to work well.

                                2 months later

                                The dark reader extension doesn't have a really good feel and while loading pages, the screen flashes white many times which isn't a pleasant experience. A native dark mode or at least fix for supporting more chromium extensions would be grt coz some dark mode extensions just aren't working or some are just redirecting me to google chrome download page so that I can then use it with chrome, "add to Orion" doesn't work. Lack of a dark mode is the only thing which keeps me away from this browser. Please find a fix soon, thank you!

                                  15 days later

                                  Vlad no it doesnt invert it, it gives the site an even better dark mode by darkening even the dropdown sections which would probably be in greyish black. I use chrome and no dark mode extension, i just force dark content in chrome flags and it works wonders! Much much better than probably any extension i have used so far. Also, theres a safari extension called nightshift, which is probably the closest extension to chromium browsers' force dark content feature, so you can take a look at that extenion. Nightshift works and darkens the sites similar to how chromes built in dark mode does, only sometimes when i havent loaded a new url for a long time on safari, a white screen flashes when i load a new url( the extension maybe just goes into a standby mode and then when i reload or load a new website, it takes a millisecond to activate) and then it again works perfectly like chromes built in dark mode. So you can refer to "Nightshift", a very cool and free extension.