Wikipedia:Dark mode

This is an information page.

It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect differing levels of consensus and vetting.

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A light-on-dark color scheme (dark mode, night mode) has been suggested as an option/enhancement to Wikipedia numerous times since 2010, including on Phabricator. Wikipedia's smartphone apps offer an official night mode, but the desktop settings do not. While there is no official desktop dark mode yet, there is a gadget on English Wikipedia, and various volunteer-written CSS files that allow customization for logged-in users. More limited options exist for non-logged-in users. No current options are actively supported or maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation.

Beta feature[edit]

As of January 2024, there is a dark mode in development. It has not been released yet. The next step will be to release it as a "beta feature" in the beta section of Special:Preferences.^[1]

Options for logged-in users[edit]

Gadgets[edit]

There are two Gadgets that can be enabled in Preferences:

Wikipedia:Dark mode (gadget) - Under the "Appearance" section of the "Gadgets" tab, select the checkbox for "Dark mode toggle". Once checked, dark mode is available to toggle in the preferences portlet, located in the Upper Right-Hand corner of the page. The link to click is named "Dark mode", and is by the "Watchlist" link.
MediaWiki:Gadget-Blackskin.css - Also found under the "Appearance" section of the "Gadgets" tab, is the checkbox with text: "Use a black background with green text".

CSS[edit]

Apart from gadgets, another way to get a dark mode is adding custom CSS to your user style page(s). This is more complex than activating a gadget, but more flexible, allowing, for example: custom colors, custom fonts, or hiding unused UI elements. Help:User style describes the process of adding custom CSS in general. For dark mode-specific CSS, a number of options are available including:

WikimediaUI Dark mode – the css powering the dark mode gadget usable as a standalone style without the gadget, stable version from April 25, 2020, by User:AHollender (WMF), User:Volker E. (WMF), User:MusikAnimal
Darklands dark theme – a low contrast dark mode in development July 2023, tested with Vector legacy only, by User:Dialectric
DavidL's DarkTheme – in development May 2023, by User:DavidL
Tollens' dark theme – an easily-customizable dark theme by User:Tollens
wikipedia-userstyle-dark-minimum by User:Vitaly Zdanevich

Dialectric's darklands theme
DavidL's thème sombre
Tollens' dark theme
Dark minimal theme from Vitaly Zdanevich

Compatibility table
	Timeless	Vector (2022)	Vector old (2010)	MinervaNeue	MonoBook
WikimediaUI Dark mode	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Darklands dark theme	N	N	Y	N	Y
DavidL's DarkTheme	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Tollens' dark theme	N	Y	Y	Y	Y
Vitaly Zdanevich's dark theme	N	N	Y	N	N

Options for unregistered users[edit]

Browser extensions[edit]

There are browser extensions for popular browsers that offer a Wikipedia-specific dark mode, and browser extensions that allow you to set custom CSS for a given domain, which could be used with the CSS available above. However, all browser extensions need to be carefully screened for security issues. Some inject advertising, and customization may be more difficult than editing a single CSS file.

There are several add-on/extension offerings on Firefox which work well. The most popular is Dark Mode for Wikipedia which uses only a single css style sheet to enable dark mode on Wikipedia. Do not install any extension or add-on that you don't trust.

Browser settings[edit]

If you use Chrome, there is also a built-in experimental/beta setting to force dark mode, set through chrome://flags/ with the description "Force Dark Mode for Web Contents - Automatically render all web contents using a dark theme". This is provided by Chrome's development team, so security should not be a concern, but this will render all web pages in dark mode. This feature is also available in Microsoft Edge, through the edge://flags/ menu.