Ask HN: Why doesn't HN have dark mode yet?
Hacker News could benefit from native dark mode support. For users who spend significant time reading here, particularly during evening hours or in low-light environments, a dark theme option would reduce eye strain. Currently, users seeking dark mode must install browser extensions that sometimes require broad permissions ("Read and change all your data on websites"). While these extensions work, they introduce an unnecessary dependency and potential privacy concern for what could be handled natively.
The web standard `prefers-color-scheme` media query has been widely supported since 2019, allowing sites to automatically respect users' system preferences. Implementation would involve straightforward CSS additions.
This feature would serve users with light sensitivity, those working in dimly lit spaces, and anyone who simply prefers dark interfaces. Given that many developers already use dark themes in their editors and terminals, there's likely meaningful demand within HN's user base.
The absence of this option stands out among text-heavy sites that have adopted dark modes. While not urgent, it represents a quality-of-life improvement that would cost little to implement but provide genuine value to a subset of the community.
Here are the current styles with dark mode support:
https://gist.github.com/schappim/d688c7090ea2e946e9379e2678d4d820
Previous requests:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=hn%20dark%20mode&sort=byPopularity&type=story
Early on, Paul mentioned how sites will redesign and lose their charm, like the quaint restaurant around the corner which was quirky but always booked, and then expanded, tripling its size but also destroying its character, and then went out of business. He didn't want that to happen here.
Personally, I disagree. I think this place got big anyway. It's not the same as it was when it started, and a redesign would reflect that.
But should that restaurant have never tried to expand?
Exactly. I think for an entrepreneurial organization, it smacks of terror and risk avoidance, instead of courage and confidence to expand judiciously.
I built my own front-end for hacker news and it supports dark mode. However now my problem is to comment (like this one) I have to switch back to hacker news itself, and the flipping back and forth from dark mode back to light mode is intense; I am still looking at after-images from the dark-mode text right now. So I will definitely support a native dark mode option :P.
Why not use a custom style sheet to do this? That way you can have a dark mode when using HN directly.
Lack of dark mode is the least of the sites UX problems. HN fails hard on all vision-related accessibility criteria.