Night mode is an option in various pieces of software that turns bright whites and creams into darker blacks and greys. It’s a good option to have when you’re in a dimly-lit environment and the screen’s light is particularly harsh. Even better, sometimes software in night mode just plain looks better than the default choice, meaning people will change to it regardless of eye strain! Unfortunately, if you want either Chrome or Firefox to go into night mode, you’ll discover there’s no officially-implemented solution. Thankfully, people from around the world have contributed themes and add-ons that’ll help save your sight. Let’s cover some of these add-ons for both browsers and review the ways you can protect your vision during those night-time computer sessions.
Chrome
Morpheon Dark
Morpheon Dark is a theme for Chrome that changes Chrome’s frame from white to black. This means that your tabs, main bar, and bookmarks bar will be given a darker shade of colour. It installs as a theme, so you can easily remove it from Settings if it’s not to your liking.
So, how does it look? Morpheon Dark compliments the design of Chrome well and offers a custom-made user theme that doesn’t look tacky or unpolished. Even if you’re not so enthusiastic about caring about eye strain, you may want to install this theme just for how good it looks. Definitely a good choice for those who want something a little darker!
Deluminate
Darker themes are very useful for ridding the browser window of bright colours, but did you know that there are add-ons that darken webpages too? This is the goal of the Chrome add-on Deluminate which looks through the websites you’re on and inverts all the light colours to dark ones. You’ll sometimes find that it also inverts photos and images (making for some creepy results!), but you can turn this off in the Deluminate options.
If inverting colours is not ideal, you can tell Deluminate to instead dim the webpage. The result keeps the page’s original colours but darkens them. The result is a webpage that’s less of a strain on the eyes.
This selection of choice is very empowering as a user. Instead of being stuck with one option, Deluminate offers a wide range of eye-saving choices that allows you to customise how you view webpages. Even the amount of dimming Deluminate does is toggled by a slider! If you’re looking for something to dull the colours on the pages you visit, definitely try Deluminate.
Firefox
FT DeepDark
FT DeepDark does a very good job at darkening Firefox’s lighter windows. As you can see from the picture below, it presents itself as a very stylish theme. All of the lighter colours are muted, including the new tab page that Firefox shows. Even the address bar is toned down to really cut down on those bright colours. Even if you’re not too concerned about eye strain, you have to admit that FT DeepDark looks great!
Dark Background with Light Text
If you want to darken every webpage, however, you’re able to do so with the simply-named “Dark Background with Light Text” add-on. This one works very much like the Chrome counterpart we covered earlier, taking the lighter colours on webpages and inverting them to be dark.
There’s a lot of options with this add-on, so try them all out and see which one suits you. Even better, you can tell the add-on to work in different ways for different websites. Should you want to darken Twitter but keep your Instagram page bright, you can tell that to the add-on. You can even tell the add-on to use different darkening methods for different sites if you like.
Conclusion
At a time where we spend a lot of our work and leisure times staring at monitors, taking precautions against eye strain can do wonders for our health. Darkening the colours we’re exposed to can do wonders for our sight, while also looking pretty great in the process! Do you have a favourite night mode add-on for your browser? Does the topic of eye strain concern you, or do you feel you’re on top of the matter? Let us know in the comments.
