Google.com dark mode is rolling out to everyone:
It's finally happening: Google.com is getting a dark mode. What was once the domain of janky site-theming browser extensions can now be enabled right from the Google home page. An official post from the support forums says that dark mode in desktop Google Search is rolling out starting today and will reach every user "over the next few weeks."
After turning on dark mode, you'll get a quick theme switcher in the gear button, allowing you to easily jump between dark and light modes. The dark setting seems to work on all the Google.com sections, like news, shopping, books, images, etc.
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Google.com Dark Mode is Rolling Out to Everyone
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(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 13 2021, @06:23PM
Does dark mode on OLED hurt your eyes?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 13 2021, @06:28PM (6 children)
with OLED and other variations of LED giving us true black again, dark themes may start to make sense.
but I don't know when it will make sense for me to give up on my 3840x2160 LCD pixels.
by the way: even with true black, it may still be better for your eyes to use some sort of light theme (pupil size is is related to average light input, damage to cells is related to pixel intensity).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 13 2021, @06:38PM (2 children)
Gray mode
(Score: 4, Informative) by Freeman on Monday September 13 2021, @07:04PM (1 child)
Just switch to Duck Duck Go.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Touché) by PinkyGigglebrain on Tuesday September 14 2021, @05:16AM
Already did :)
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday September 13 2021, @10:22PM (2 children)
Smaller pupils make depth of field longer, and therefore focus sharper for the presbyopia crowd.
Do they also have a "big text" mode for the geezers?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 13 2021, @10:31PM (1 child)
What's religion got to do with this?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday September 15 2021, @01:32PM
Cult of the old, they rule the world.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by fustakrakich on Monday September 13 2021, @06:35PM (5 children)
I still wish the browser could do it right
Now, let's go after those bastards that use light gray text on a white background
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 13 2021, @08:26PM (3 children)
>> Now, let's go after those bastards that use light gray text on a white background
Thet technical term is "millennials"
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @01:00AM (2 children)
Says the generation that created blinking text.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @02:22PM (1 child)
I know you post was a funny, I chuckled, but it wasn't a good comparison.
The heyday of blink lasted six months, most websites never used it and ones that did quickly realized how obnoxious it is and restricted or eliminated it's use. Of course there were some websites that went blink-crazy and overused it, but soon they were on everyone's don't-go-there list. "That generation" self-corrected a bad idea.
blink may have irritated the user, but it didn't affect usability of the website. Besides it only worked on Netscape, and soon the majority of users would soon turn to IE.
Compare that to "my generation's" Grey Plague of grey-on-grey text & toolbars & sidebars full of all grey icons that are geometrically similar or worse, indistinct wireframes.
Grey-on-grey has been around for a decade and shows no sign of stopping (e.g. Big Sh*t, I mean Big Sur). Most websites use it, most apps and applications implement it, everyone hates reading it due to the low contrast, but "my generation" has gone grey-on-grey insane, insists on using it and when asked why we give the lame excuse of This is the way Google does it or This is the way Apple does it.
The Grey Plague doesn't just irritate the user, it tremendously affects usability.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @02:37PM
No, I can use it just fine. I just find it irritating.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @02:23PM
In palemoon the background to text inputs is now always black. I don't recall how or why this happened. It's ok on SN as the input text color is white. In many sites the text color is set to black. I know I can jig around to override fonts to fix it for sites but now all I want to do is disable dark mode totally in Palemoon.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday September 13 2021, @06:45PM (3 children)
I prefer the Amber glow from my CRT. What is this dark mode you speak off ...
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday September 13 2021, @08:08PM (1 child)
Don't get things started with critical race theory. It's dark enough already.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 13 2021, @08:18PM
Redlining!
(Score: 1) by Acabatag on Monday September 13 2021, @10:57PM
Back in the 80's I had a greenscreen with really slow P39 phosper. I used it with an IBM ega card set for EGA monochrome mode. Used EGA monochrome for years up until I upgraded to paperwhite VGA. Graphical games were pretty much impossible, but there was good support for Windows 3 graphics.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 13 2021, @06:49PM (7 children)
It just doesn't work for me. I don't allow Google to save cookies on my machine. I don't login to do queries, if I happen to use G. I don't store my email with them. So I guess 'll just never see this magical dark mode.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 13 2021, @07:10PM
You could rip their dark mode style sheet and apply the CSS yourself. Or use a different search engine.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RamiK on Monday September 13 2021, @08:08PM (3 children)
The news is that googled started a staged rollout [twitter.com] implementing the Sec-CH-Prefers-Color-Scheme header [web.dev] - probably via the css prefers-color-scheme [mozilla.org] - to everyone making dark mode available anonymously so long as your browser / system is set to dark mode and correctly delivers the request.
The importance of the news isn't so much that you're finally getting google.com in dark mode without resorting to logging in / using extensions, but that it's gradually going to be incorporated into their "responsive" web design and mobile app guidelines as a core requirement and everyone else - CMS platforms, news sites, maybe, just maybe, soylentnews.org? - will hopefully follow and deliver white-on-black as the browser requests it.
compiling...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 13 2021, @08:54PM (2 children)
> ... soylentnews.org? - will hopefully follow and deliver white-on-black as the browser requests it.
Why would I want that? SN gives me lovely green text on black (VT100 mode) all the time (I'm logged in, posting AC). Traditional, and also (for me) a very restful color scheme. It's the comments that get me riled up!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 13 2021, @10:48PM
com ents getting you down, just thell the browser to render text all black on that vt100 scheme, then only the headlines and mods can trigger. comments are for the losers who RTFA/S/C. anyway.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday September 13 2021, @11:56PM
It's about a site wide default for when users aren't logged in for when their browser is set to a dark theme / their system is set to a dark theme.
Personal account settings naturally take precedence.
Otherwise, the issue is that different types of screens are better off with bright, dark or true black backgrounds / color schemes. Moreover, it's an accessibility issue for some people with specific eye-sight conditions.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday September 14 2021, @02:21AM (1 child)
In Chrome I installed something called Dark Reader. Does a good job sanely inverting/darkening colors on most sites. When it doesn't work it's mostly due to font color statements. Naturally, one site it kinda screws up is Google Maps. But otherwise it's been quite the eyesaver.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @03:44PM
I wonder how well it works on inverting the dark pages to light mode... that could be useful!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Monday September 13 2021, @06:55PM (4 children)
Duck Duck Go, much more privacy friendly. Certainly better than sending all your data directly to Google/Microsoft/Apple.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Monday September 13 2021, @06:58PM (2 children)
Apparently Duck Duck Go has themes too and you can choose Dark or Terminal from that list. Also, their default is gray, not blinding white. Google is a behemoth now.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by corey on Monday September 13 2021, @11:30PM
I’ve had it set like this (terminal theme) for a year or more. Have to allow Self-Destructing Cookies to not kill the DDG cookie though. It is great. But when I occasionally !g to Google something that DDG isn’t finding, I’m blinded.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Wednesday September 15 2021, @06:06PM
What's also impressive is that you can "save the link" it gives you without logging in at all. You tell Duck Duck Go how to look, bookmark the updated link, and done.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @02:27AM
DDG would be fine but, for me, on a regular basis it gives absolute dross for a couple of days then back to normal. Is that google fucking with them? Or do they need to reboot the Internets every so often?
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday September 13 2021, @06:56PM (1 child)
It's pretty much part of my job these days that I spend a good deal of time searching stuff on Google, but even I would be surprised if the sum of all the time spent staring at the Google page is more than 10 minutes a day.
I kinda don't think that this is a really high priority problem on my bucket list.
(Score: 2, Touché) by bart9h on Tuesday September 14 2021, @01:05AM
zero.
ddg ftw.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by SomeGuy on Monday September 13 2021, @07:01PM (6 children)
So, this "major" change just changes the color scheme around. Big honking deal.
They are finally re-discovering the joys of a black background just like green-screen terminals and MS-DOS. The color scheme that Macintosh made "uncool" because absolutely everything had to look like a piece of paper.
Even Microsoft Windows version 1.0 had user customizable color schemes that applications were expected to adhere to, but once teh webz came out it was magically OK to hard code every page font and background to some random eye-fucking color. (well, it's dizzying full motion video backgrounds today). If you ask me, web pages adhering to a global color scheme is something that should have been standard a long time ago.
I suppose the main push for this is because those cheap OLED screens get burn in just like green screen CRTs.
Aaaand, lets see if this prints a big black rectangle when I need to print something to paper.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday September 13 2021, @07:07PM (2 children)
https://spreadprivacy.com/duckduckgo-search-improvements/ [spreadprivacy.com] (A 2019 update to their Dark Theme, beats me how long they've had it maybe since inception?)
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 13 2021, @10:49PM (1 child)
"Our talented designer Thom..."
Pretty sure you do not need talent to make a dark mode.
Just go negative and play with the contrast on text elements with color...what is hard about that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @02:30AM
Sacrilege! Next you'll be saying the UX Team for gnome3 were noobs that never used an actual full screen computer.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Monday September 13 2021, @09:19PM (2 children)
A thousand times this. Whenever the topic comes up, it just blows me away that it's considered a major feature when the web isn't even supposed to work this way in the first place. Remember the good old days when content and presentation were two different things, and the user had some control over presentation? I don't have the old stuff lying around, but I'm pretty sure background color was a setting on Netscape betas.
So like, get off my lawn and congratulations for making a big deal out of returning our ability to change a few simple settings? No. I'm just laughing and/or shaking my head at what "technology" has become.
What next? Dim mode? *reaches over for little wheel on old monitor*.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday September 14 2021, @02:24AM (1 child)
Netscape had settings to use site colors, or system colors. I used system colors and that turned all the glare white to my nice relaxing grey.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @09:06AM
If you really want to relax you want the Joo Janta 200 colour scheme.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 13 2021, @07:59PM (3 children)
I hate dark mode. Stupid apps that default to dark mode, and have a "light mode" option that doesn't work everywhere. I want my screen to look like paper. If it's too bright, I have this funky thing called a brightness control!
(Score: 3, Informative) by RedGreen on Monday September 13 2021, @10:39PM
You are not the only one, I find those web pages that are dark in their colours so damn hard to read, they are useless most times. I usually hit the back button and see if I can find the information elsewhere.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @02:32AM (1 child)
> I want my screen to look like paper.
What color?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 14 2021, @02:42PM
I want my screen to look like paper.
What color?
Well DUH, white or whitish of course. You know, the color of paper that is used in newspapers, magazines, books, notebooks, reports, essays, and printers.
In other words, the color of paper used for items that we READ!
(Score: 2) by srobert on Monday September 13 2021, @08:07PM (1 child)
There are several extensions for doing dark mode with the browser. I've tried a few and settled on Midnight Lizard. Even if google.com offers a dark mode, I'll likely just stick with what I have.
(Score: 3, Informative) by dx3bydt3 on Tuesday September 14 2021, @09:22PM
I like Dark Reader, it works in Firefox and Chrome, allows you to tweak it by site. It can be enabled by default, so you don't get a blast of blinding white when browsing to a new site. Besides that I also use Stylus, and have created custom dark themes for a few sites, SoylentNews included.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by aristarchus on Monday September 13 2021, @08:59PM
Not sure how much more extreme STEM on the front page I can handle. Has anyone covered Windows 11 wallpapers and ringtones, yet?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 13 2021, @10:02PM
#BLM and all, but I can't wait to see what their UX geniuses come up with when Chinamen become the cause of the day.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Acabatag on Monday September 13 2021, @10:48PM (2 children)
To set this preference, do I have to 'log in' to Google? Because I never log in to Google on a browser that I actually use for anything. I have gmail on the phone which I check every few days, otherwise I actively avoid google. It is blocked on the desktop with noscript.
(Score: 2, Touché) by bart9h on Tuesday September 14 2021, @01:07AM (1 child)
if you hate google that much, why do you still use their search? duckduckgo is just one of the alternatives..
(Score: 1) by Acabatag on Friday September 17 2021, @02:09AM
Google's search is more powerful because of the reach of their tentacles but yes, I mostly use DDG.