https://darkreader.org/
Darkreader plus 150-200% zoom and you have something pretty usable on hidpi displays. You could always try making your own frontend for HN, it's pretty trivial :)
Ask HN: Dark Mode for HN is overdue
21–30 of 54 posts
Re: Ask HN: Dark Mode for HN is overdue
#22If you're on firefox, this extension is lovely
https://www.modernhn.com/
Re: Ask HN: Dark Mode for HN is overdue
#23You are allowed to reduce your display brightness. I run my iPhone at the lowest possible setting at night (right now). Try it sometime. It might seem really dim at first but your eyes will adjust in a few minutes. I think dark mode can be deceptive. Blazing hot white text on a pitch black oled background is like visual caffeine to me. I would not want to be staring at this if I was adjacent to bedtime.
I triple click my power button and it inverts colours, does the job reasonably enough.
Re: Ask HN: Dark Mode for HN is overdue
#24A quote from the post you mentioned
> I don't want my eyes to burn when I'm browsing HN at night on my phone
Is it just me who feels completely opposite? I struggle to read dark, text-heavy websites for the exact same reason.
Also, if dark mode ends up happening, please put the checkbox on the account page, the UI is busy enough :)
Re: Ask HN: Dark Mode for HN is overdue
#25It's sad that everyone has to run around implementing hard-coded "dark themes" 30 years after computers users could routinely set up system-wide color schemes themselves.
The whole point here is for websites to respect those user configured system-wide color schemes.
This is why prefers-color-scheme exists.
Re: Ask HN: Dark Mode for HN is overdue
#26You are allowed to reduce your display brightness. I run my iPhone at the lowest possible setting at night (right now). Try it sometime. It might seem really dim at first but your eyes will adjust in a few minutes. I think dark mode can be deceptive. Blazing hot white text on a pitch black oled background is like visual caffeine to me. I would not want to be staring at this if I was adjacent to bedtime.
iPhone min brightness setting still flashes the screen at max brightness, just at a slower rate so you perceive it as less bright, but it’s actually still burning your retina at max light output of the OLED on each flash.
Look it up.
Re: Ask HN: Dark Mode for HN is overdue
#27You are allowed to reduce your display brightness. I run my iPhone at the lowest possible setting at night (right now). Try it sometime. It might seem really dim at first but your eyes will adjust in a few minutes. I think dark mode can be deceptive. Blazing hot white text on a pitch black oled background is like visual caffeine to me. I would not want to be staring at this if I was adjacent to bedtime.
The display brightness doesn’t go dim enough
On iPhone/iPad, use the zoom accessibility feature set to 1x but with the darken filter on.
On Mac, there's an app old app that still works called Shady to get darker than normal.
Re: Ask HN: Dark Mode for HN is overdue
#28I checked my calendar. It didn't say anything about dark modes. What does the current year have to do with anything?
Re: Ask HN: Dark Mode for HN is overdue
#29[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Dark Mode for HN is overdue
#30I put my phone’s brightness down to minimum at night. Nonetheless I use HN purposely as a dim light when the phone’s torch would be too bright and a beige glow does the job splendidly. (Typically, when I’m moving around the house late at night and everyone else is asleep - when pitch black the torch is too extreme.)
That said, given the amount of time I spend reading on the site I do wish there was a dark mode option.