New Update Dark Background and Light Text is probably the best dark Firefox add-on

CyberTech

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Nov 10, 2017
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Dark Background and Light Text is a dark theme add-on for the Firefox web browser that converts the color scheme of webpages to a black background and light text by default; it comes with support for different styles, and can be disabled on individual sites.

Some users prefer dark themes or websites; operating system developers such as Google or Microsoft have launched support for dark themes in recent years, and browsers like Firefox or Chrome support extensions that can change the color scheme of webpages to make them darker.

Some add-ons cause readability issues and require manual adjustments; Dark Background and Light Text is a popular browser extension for Firefox that is considered by many the best extension of its kind for the browser. Note that we have reviewed several dark theme extensions for Firefox in the past; you may want to check out reviews of automaticDark and Dark Reader as well.

All you have to do is install the extension in Firefox to start using it. Any site you visit, with the notable exception of internal pages and some Mozilla domains, will be converted to a dark color scheme automatically. You can click on the icon that the extension places in the Firefox address bar to disable its functionality on the active page or to change the algorithm that is used to change the color scheme.

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SeriousHoax

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Mar 16, 2019
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Yeah, I agree. I've been using it since 2019 I think and it's simply better than the available alternatives for me. But I actually don't like its default background color which is basically pitch black. I changed it to #101010 in preference which is dark grey and before I used to use #202020 which a bit lighter.
Dark Reader is more popular and works better but that one is much slower. But this one, the Dark Background and Light Text extension has basically no impact on page loading time.
 

Stopspying

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Yeah, I agree. I've been using it since 2019 I think and it's simply better than the available alternatives for me. But I actually don't like its default background color which is basically pitch black. I changed it to #101010 in preference which is dark grey and before I used to use #202020 which a bit lighter.
Dark Reader is more popular and works better but that one is much slower. But this one, the Dark Background and Light Text extension has basically no impact on page loading time.
I've been using Dark Reader for some time but had not noticed that it was slower. In all honesty I can't really see a difference between DR and this extension with regard to speed.
I'm with you on preferring a shade of grey to pitch black, the latter isn't as harsh on my eyes as brilliant white but its not a comfortable colour to look at for hours on end. I've switched between the shades you mention too, we seem to have the same vision abilities/inabilities!
 

SeriousHoax

Level 47
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Mar 16, 2019
3,630
I've been using Dark Reader for some time but had not noticed that it was slower. In all honesty I can't really see a difference between DR and this extension with regard to speed.
I'm with you on preferring a shade of grey to pitch black, the latter isn't as harsh on my eyes as brilliant white but its not a comfortable colour to look at for hours on end. I've switched between the shades you mention too, we seem to have the same vision abilities/inabilities!
Haha, yeah similar preference I guess.
Dark Reader used to be quite slow on Firefox but it has been improved but still a bit slow in many cases.
According to my observations, almost any extensions for dark web pages slow down the rendering of complex websites in Firefox. Mozilla needs to make this feature native, but they prefer to do a redesign. :)
I fully agree. Dark Background and Light Text is the fastest in my experience but still slows down a bit in complex pages. Chromium's native darkening is one of the reasons I got interested in Chromium again after exclusively using Firefox since 2017.
 

SeriousHoax

Level 47
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Mar 16, 2019
3,630
Here's a little test to show the basic speed difference between Dark Reader and Dark Background and Light Text.
Dark Reader: dr.gif
Dark Background and Light Text:dl.gif
No darkening extension: df.gif

As you can Dark Reader is half a second slow and I can actively notice this almost every time in day-to-day usage.
Dark Background and Light Text and extensionless speed are almost the same. If there's a delay then it's not really noticiable. But as @CyberDevil said, in complex pages, there will be a certain amount of slowdowns.
 

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