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Ask HN: Why is there no dark theme for Hacker News?
Simple question: why is there no dark theme for Hacker News?
(Is there a recommended browser plugin or way to override the site CSS to generate a dark theme on my machine "manually"?)
- gorenb 3y agoI don’t actually know, but honestly the entire website theme, to quote the New Yorker, “looks like a 1990s web forum.”
- beardyw 3y agoIt's functional. Complaints are rare, unlike what would happen if you "updated" it.
- gorenb 3y agoI literally just quoted the New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/the-lonely-work-of-moderating-hacker-news https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th... Oh, and I bet that if you updated it, it would look much better, because I’m not experienced in front-end development, and I’m guessing you are. So don’t say Hacker News is so beautiful while you know you could make it better.
- beardyw 3y agoNo, you are right, but it is functional in that it it does what it intends. It would be a challenge to make it more modern without increasing complexity and load time and probably breaking someone's favourite browser.
- athesyn 3y agoIt's functional in the sense there isn't many functions at all. You can't even do basic things like sort comments.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- BillyTheMage 3y agoI couldn't live without the Dark Reader [1] plugin. Every website is now dark. Once in a great while it does something weird, but that's on specific websites with weird stuff going on. It makes Hacker News look great. It's available for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Edge. - [1]: https://darkreader.org/ https://darkreader.org/
- mikece 3y agoHow have I never known about this plugin? This is AWESOME -- thank you! This joins uBlock Origin and One-Tab as no-brainer essential plugins.
- BillyTheMage 3y agoI agree, it's absolutely essential. I think I should also mention the Dimmer [1] plugin. It just reduces brightness, and it can be turned on either globally or per-website. Combined with Dark Reader, barely any websites hurt my eyes anymore.
- pentaphobe 3y agoThis recurring question is like the Eternal September theme song
- nness 3y agoThe site's markup is so old it still triggers quirks mode — I personally prefer it, don't mess with what works.
- pentaphobe 3y agoCompletely agree. I'm predominantly in dark mode, but love the comfortable familiarity of this orange glow, and the content-first simple layout If that ever changes I'll probably just use some light user scripts / CSS
- susam 3y agoI have written a tiny userscript for myself to browse HN with a dark colour theme. Visit https://github.com/susam/userscripts#dark-hn https://github.com/susam/userscripts#dark-hn to see the userscript. It runs fine with a userscript manager like Greasemonkey, Violentmonkey, or Tampermonkey. On the same page there is another userscript named "Big HN" that shows HN with larger fonts. I use both together for a pleasant HN reading experience.
- TowerTall 3y agoUse use the "Auto Dark Mode For WebContent" that is available on all chromium based browsers. Go to: about://flags and search for darkmode and select enabled
- throwaway798214 3y agoIf you are running uBlock Origin (and why wouldn't you?) edit your "My filters" and add these lines to the end: ! Hacker News dark mode news.ycombinator.com##html:style(filter:invert(100%) hue-rotate(180deg)) news.ycombinator.com##body:style(background: white) Not my original work, I found these from older HN post. Easy way to add dark mode without installing any other addons.
- EspressoGPT 3y agoUse Modern for HN, it has everything you need.
- factorialboy 3y agoI use the Dark Reader plugin at the browser level to enforce dark mode (syncs with OS mode) across all websites.