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The Dark Reader extension on MacOS and especially iOS/iPadOS is regularly buggy and one of the most cited reasons for people not using Orion. Dark mode extensions also require a lot of permissions and so are a potentially privacy / security vulnerability.

Please consider adding a native feature that can force dark mode on every website with keyboard shortcuts / an easy way to toggle on and off in both MacOS and iOS. The Noir app has one of the cleanest UIs and in my opinion works better than Dark Reader and could serve as a template.

Basic Requirements:

  1. Can automatically detect (a) system dark mode settings and (b) if a website has a built-in dark mode.
  2. Can override website built-in dark mode if detection is wrong.
  3. Ability to turn on/off globally and for a specific website.
  4. Ability to turn on/off via (1) Menu placement next to Reader Mode, (2) Keyboard shortcut similar to Reader Mode, (3) Gestures.

Optional Features:

  1. Ability to customize Dark Mode via themes (e.g. Dark, Black, Gray, Sepia) or granular settings
  2. Ability to "Disable until Tomorrow" for a specific website
  3. Ability to set for "this website" vs. "this URL" i.e. for the domain name vs. the specific URL for even more customizability.
    Merged 1 post from Add Native Dark Mode for every website (e.g. Dark Reader).

      @Vlad FWIW this is especially valuable for iOS / iPadOS where the Dark Reader extension remains really buggy and where keyboard shortcuts to toggle on and off continue not to work. Also, the programmable button workaround doesn’t apply to iOS / iPad OS.

      Relatedly, being able to toggle dark mode on/off with a gesture would be a meaningful improvement even over Safari with Noir / Dark Reader.

      The lack of robust dark mode support across platforms remains my single biggest obstacle to going all-in on Orion over alternatives such as Safari.

      • Vlad replied to this.

        Vlad is there a way to test this in iOS / iPad? Dark Reader is particularly buggy on those platforms.

        Nevermind, figured it out. Seems to work pretty well so far, but it currently only triggers if I go to Settings->Bookmarks->Favorites->Dark Mode Bookmarklet which is really tedious for testing. I tried triggering the bookmarklet from Favorites on the Start Page or using an invocation, but neither methods work. Is that worth submitting as a feature request? Currently it's very tedious to keep testing out this script on iOS / iPad OS but I'd like to help move this along as best I can.

            Vlad This makes sense, but this workaround has a couple issues that maybe the team could try to resolve as a temporary fix?

            1. The Programmable button doesn't trigger automatically, so relying on using the Programmable button workaround still subjects users to bright flashes of light every time the reload or go to a new web page.
            2. As of now, the Programmable button workaround is not available on iOS / iPad OS. Is there another way to make this easily triggerable for iOS users? Perhaps by making bookmarklets triggerable through gestures, Favorites, invocation, etc.

                Vlad has been working so far. One annoying thing is the top and bottom “bars” of the browser don’t match the background:

                • Vlad replied to this.

                    CrunchyFritos Well mostly we need feedback whether our dark mode script works and then we cna implement it natively. Considering is is only 500 bytes I would be surprised if it worked as well.

                        a month later

                        CrunchyFritos please can you guide me on how to "install" this bookmarklet for dark mode in ios?

                        • Vlad replied to this.

                            chorizo Add in on your desktop bookmark bar, it will sync to iOS and then use it through bookmark menu in the iOS app. But clunky, but it works.

                              Wouldn't the new page tweaks feature fulfill this request?

                              The only caveat is that it requires per-site configuration with no way to have it enabled by default. However, that is not entirely bad as there are some sites where I wouldn't want automatic dark mode in the first place. I consider the page tweaks implementation quite a good compromise and I'd suggest marking this as Next Release
                              @Vlad

                                Vlad Does page tweaks work on iOS / iPadOS and can it be set to default to dark mode with a user defined list of exceptions? For example, all sites will be dark mode except the sites where I manually turn it off.

                                    10 days later

                                    @Vlad Does this work for iOS and can it be set to default to always on dark mode? I don’t see how this feature can be marked as done if that isn’t the case.

                                    • Vlad replied to this.

                                      Vlad but you merged in feature requests for iOS such as mine from May: CrunchyFritos

                                      Should I open a new feature request and copy my original request back in?

                                      Also, is there a way to leave dark mode always on in desktop vs. setting for each site individually? Seems like that’s a prerequisite for a functional dark mode equivalent.

                                      • Vlad replied to this.
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