Ask HN: Dark Mode for HN? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Dark Mode for HN?

46 pointstodotask244 comments

Can we have a dark mode for HackerNews?

i forget where i found this in an HN comment, but you can use this in uBlock Origin under Filters:

  news.ycombinator.com##body:style(background: black)
  news.ycombinator.com##td:style(color: #fafafa !important)
  news.ycombinator.com##table:style(background-color: #120F0D)
  news.ycombinator.com##div.toptext:style(color: #fafafa)
  news.ycombinator.com##div.c00:style(color: #fafafa !important)
  news.ycombinator.com##a:style(color: #ffa000 !important)
  news.ycombinator.com##span#karma:style(color: #faa000 !important)
  news.ycombinator.com##span.pagetop:style(color: #fafafa !important)
  news.ycombinator.com##textarea:style(color: #fafafa !important; background: inherit; )
  news.ycombinator.com###hnmain:style(background: #120F0D !important)

An earlier mention of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36344815

This time is iOS 26 adds any website shortcut to Home Screen as web app, which definitely need a dark mode.

Dark mode is great, but better to leave the site with low or no style and to apply personal styling preference in the browser via Dark Reader or Stylus extension.

It would be extremely simple to add dark mode. We're talking about CSS changes here. Instead of having to rely on random extensions being installed everywhere you browse, it could just do what you want from your preferences.

True, but Dark Reader and Stylus are great extensions that can improve any site.

Being self sufficient is a superpower that should be encouraged on the web. Change colors, fix formatting, remove ads! Power to the user!

In that case give me the JSON data, I’ll do the rest.

https://github.com/HackerNews/API

How many sites offer this?

I was chuffed a ways back to find a JSON endpoint at the NYTimes.

It was, unfortunately, rather stale.

(It's also since vanished and/or I cannot recall the correct URL. The obvious ones, <https://www.nytimes.com/JSON> and <https://www.nytimes.com/json> don't work. There is a dev portal however: <https://developer.nytimes.com/docs/archive-product/1/overvie...> FAQ: <https://developer.nytimes.com/faq>.)

I agree with self-sufficiency but installing a plugin is not always possible, it's not something you make for yourself anyway, why should I trust the plugin guy, etc. Browsers should really come with dark mode features already but I appreciate the option to install a plugin sometimes.

Some sites (and something I did while refactoring my portfolio) is levarage that to CSS. You can set is as to read the light/dark mode setting from the OS and provide a "toggle" to let the user choose between light and dark. This doesn't even need JS, just a couple hidden `<input type="radio">`s and some bits of CSS.

Although as I've said in another comment, things like this, "go to the top" buttons, cookie banners and the like should be task of the web browser, not of the website.

Linked from my HN profile page is the style I use (via the Stylus browser extension):

Dred's HN CSS Madhackery -- Dark Mode: <https://pastebin.com/6PF3dCXH>

You'll also find there my standard "light mode" styling which is how I typically browse the site.

The Noir app for iOS is what I use and it works well for HN.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/noir-dark-mode-for-safari/id15...

I currently use:

On the laptop: Modern HN (https://www.modernhn.com) for Firefox. Not fond of the phoning home to firebase and extensionpay.

On the GrapheneOS Pixel: Harmonic (https://github.com/SimonHalvdansson/Harmonic-HN)

I really like Harmonic, but there's other features from Materialistic that I miss: - ability to switch back and forth from the article to the comments (in harmonic you have to scroll up or use a second app as browser) - ability to see the comment you're replying to - per-comment menu without long-press - draft comments (pause editing and save the comment to continue later...if you can remember where it was)

Why does every HN app re-implement bookmarks? Why can't they just save them to the HN website? Sure, you'd maybe need to fetch the static page from HN itself instead of using the API, and parse it for the favorite link to get the URL necessary, but it should be fairly simple regardless of whatever other changes are made (the link text is favorite, it's probably the first occurrence of a link with that text and has predictable URL format)

A year ago, dang said the team would prefer a more robust theming solution: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41105536

Perfect is the enemy of the good.

https://xkcd.com/974/

I'm developing a system to pass arbitrary condiments.

We can change the color of the top bar - so everything’s already basically there.

Been there, done that. Then dropped dark mode entirely. Strong filtering of blue light (use redshift or whatever your OS provides) beats dark theme IMHO, without the downsides.

I default to light mode these days. Astigmatism does not goes well with small, bright details against a dark background. Then I can turn the brightness of the display way down.

Given CSS rules, it would be simple using CSS light-dark() + variables instead of raw colors.

I'm using Dark Reader since a long time now, but more and more often disabling it for some sites supporting HTML relatively recent additions.

Well supported by all mainstream browsers:

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

This time, iOS 26 adds the ability to create a shortcut to the Home Screen as a web app, which definitely needs a dark mode. It appears that none of the extensions are loaded

All you need is https://darkreader.org/

Yep, I usually have it setup to whitelist mode, most pages will open normally, but if I want to read some long text and prefer it to be on dark mode, I activate it only for that page.

I use the Stylus Chrome extension with CSS:

html {background: #000;} body {filter: invert(.95) hue-rotate(12deg);}

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/stylus/clngdbkpkpee...

You may try this extension: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/hacker-news-tools/f...

There is also https://hackerweb.app/

It has the extra benefit of only showing 60 latest HN items in 2 pages of 30, which helps me not spend too much time on HN going down interesting rabbit holes.

Uhh isn't default HN always 30 items?

They mean you can press "more" only once for a maximum of 60 vs HNs "infinite" more button.

EDIT: now I know there is max 35 pages of HN

I know it's likely not what you're looking for, but I "turned on" Dark Mode HN after reading this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45111854

Stylus extension with Catpuccin theme for HN. Stylus has a bunch of other themes available too. For other websites too. IDK if I trust the proxy websites people are posting in other comments. And they're not comfortable to use with RSS feeds.

I use this extension for Stylus on Firefox: https://github.com/pyxelr/hacker-news-bluish-gray

I made this 5 years ago: https://jgthms.com/hacker-news-dark-mode/

Based on YC's reaction to the many, many other request like this I'm going to say No. The DIY options in responses are the best you're going to get.

I’ve tried asking for it because embedded browsers in RSS readers can’t use extensions, but I am positive usability isn’t a priority…

https://hn-reader.pages.dev/

Wild that Netscape Navigator 1.1 (1995) had the ability to pick background colors for web pages.

You already do on a mac at least. ctrl-option-command-8.

Fond memories of doing this on all the display Macs at CompUSA.

Surprisingly this is extremely laggy on my m3 pro on macos 14.2.1 now that I test it out...

A+++ , would buy again, :)

Dark Reader for Firefox

I made this userscript: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/504879-simple-darkmode-for...

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