Questions

Most questions can be answered by reading the help page. If the help page doesn't answer your question, open up a new discussion.

How to contribute

Read more about contributing to Dark Reader in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Building for use

You can install the extension from a file.
Install Node.js LTS. Download the source code (or check out from git).
Open terminal in the root folder and run:

• npm install
• npm run build

This will generate a build/release/darkreader-chrome.zip file that is useable in a Chromium-based browser and also a build/release/darkreader-firefox.xpi file that is useable in Firefox.

Using Dark Reader for a website

You can use Dark Reader to enable dark mode on your website!

• Install the package from NPM (npm install darkreader)
• or build from the source code (npm run api)
• or include the script via a CDN such as unpkg or jsDelivr

Then you can use the following code to control Dark Reader's API

DarkReader.enable({
    brightness: 100,
    contrast: 90,
    sepia: 10
});

DarkReader.disable();

// Enable when the system color scheme is dark.
DarkReader.auto({
    brightness: 100,
    contrast: 90,
    sepia: 10
});

// Stop watching for the system color scheme.
DarkReader.auto(false);

// Get the generated CSS of Dark Reader returned as a string.
const CSS = await DarkReader.exportGeneratedCSS();

// Check if Dark Reader is enabled.
const isEnabled = DarkReader.isEnabled();

... or if you are using ES modules

import {
    enable as enableDarkMode,
    disable as disableDarkMode,
    auto as followSystemColorScheme,
    exportGeneratedCSS as collectCSS,
    isEnabled as isDarkReaderEnabled
} from 'darkreader';

enableDarkMode({
    brightness: 100,
    contrast: 90,
    sepia: 10,
});

disableDarkMode();

followSystemColorScheme();

const CSS = await collectCSS();

const isEnabled = isDarkReaderEnabled();

Be aware, that darkreader will add the chrome object onto the window object, these are to stub certain functions that the code will use. They originate from the webextension-api.

Site fixes

Automatically syncing the site fixes to every Dark Reader user was disabled because the GitHub team doesn't allow using GitHub as a CDN. Storing these files and making requests to other resources would be expensive and look suspicious. As such, changes are included with each new Dark Reader release.

However, this can be enabled by the following steps:

• Click on the Dark Reader icon.
• Click on the Dev tools button (in the bottom-right corner).
• Click on the Preview new design button.
• Enable the Synchronize site fixes setting under Settings -> Manage Settings.