Adds dark mode to every website, customisable brightness, contrast, and colour temperature. Free and open source.
Editor's Verdict
Dark Reader is the best free dark mode extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. It applies a customisable dark theme to every website, even ones without a native dark mode. Reduces eye strain during long development or research sessions. Open source.
Overall
4.7 / 5
Pricing
Free
Install Dark Reader
Official extension. Always install from the verified source
Dark Reader generates dark themes for websites in real time. Unlike Chrome's native "Force Dark Mode" experiment or the browser's built-in dark setting, Dark Reader analyses each page and applies intelligent inversion that preserves contrast, image quality, and text readability. It works on every website, including ones that have no official dark mode, and gives you granular control over brightness, contrast, sepia, and grayscale per site.
Free tier vs paid features
Dark Reader has no paid tier. It is genuinely free and open source under the MIT license, with all source code on GitHub. The developer accepts optional donations through Open Collective. This matters because most "free dark mode" extensions in 2026 are either ad-supported clones or sell user data. Dark Reader does neither.
Free
Free and open source on GitHub
Paid
No paid tier. Optional donation supports development
Who actually uses Dark Reader
For developers who code at night, Dark Reader makes Stack Overflow, MDN, and GitHub readable at 2am without burning your retinas. For writers and researchers, it makes long reading sessions on Wikipedia and Medium less fatiguing. For people with light sensitivity or migraines, it is one of the most-recommended accessibility extensions because the per-site controls let you fine-tune contrast.
Pros and cons
Pros
Free and open source, no telemetry
Per-site dark theme controls
Works on every website, not just ones with native dark mode
Available on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge
Active development since 2018
Cons
Can struggle with image-heavy sites and complex CSS
Sometimes inverts product photos in awkward ways
Adds a small render delay on slow machines
No native sync of per-site settings across browsers
Should you install Dark Reader?
If you spend more than two hours a day in your browser, install Dark Reader. The default settings work well on most sites, and the per-site controls handle edge cases.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Dark Reader is completely free and open source under the MIT license. The source code is on GitHub and the developer accepts optional donations through Open Collective. There is no premium tier, no advertising, and no telemetry.
Yes. Dark Reader is open source, has no analytics or telemetry, and has been independently audited multiple times. The extension does request access to all sites because it needs to modify page styles, but the code that handles this is publicly viewable on GitHub.
Dark Reader. Chrome's built-in "Force Dark Mode" is an experimental feature that often produces unreadable results on complex sites. Dark Reader analyses each page and applies a more intelligent dark theme that preserves contrast and image quality. The per-site controls also let you tune individual problem sites.
By default, Dark Reader inverts dark images to keep them visible on a dark background. If you would rather images stay as they are, open Dark Reader's settings and toggle off "Invert image colors". For per-site behaviour, use the site-specific controls accessed via the Dark Reader icon on that page.
Slightly. Dark Reader recalculates page styles when loaded, which adds a small delay on slow machines. On modern hardware, the delay is imperceptible. If you experience slowness, try the "Static" mode in Dark Reader's settings, which applies a precomputed theme rather than analysing each page.
Yes. Dark Reader has an official Safari version available on the Mac App Store. The Safari version has the same feature set as the Chrome version, including per-site controls and the same intelligent dark theme generation.