Use Noir to Enable Dark Mode in Safari
Stumbling upon a light-colored website in dark mode will feel like a light bulb is shining right into your eyes. Noir is a Safari extension that automatically adds dark mode to colorful websites.
Modern operating systems, including Apple devices, offer a sort of system-wide dark mode that puts light text on a dark background instead of the more traditional black on white. At this point, almost all applications respect system-wide settings, but many websites do not. Noir helps by changing the websites you view so that they offer light text on a dark background, essentially forcing them to support dark mode.
I tested it for a few days and it works very well even with web apps like Google Docs. By default, Noir is tied to your system settings. This means that dark mode only applies to websites when your device is set to dark mode, which is ideal if you switch between them regularly or if your device automatically switches to dark mode .
To get started, you’ll need to purchase and install the app—it costs $2.99 for iOS and $3.99 for Mac (this is a one-time purchase—no subscription). The application will help you open Safari settings and enable the extension on all websites, which is necessary for it to work. After that, when dark mode is enabled, you will get dark versions of all the websites you visit.
For the most part, at this point you can just stop thinking about the app – it will just do its job in the background. If you want to tweak the settings a bit, or if a particular website doesn’t work with these changes, you can click the Noir icon to change the settings. You can decide whether to disable the extension for the current site. You can also choose a custom theme for your current site. Four themes are offered: Black, the darkest of the four; Dark, default; Gray, lighter option with a smaller contract; and Sepia, the lightest theme offered.
It’s good to have multiple options, especially if the default option doesn’t look good on a particular site. And you can change a few system-wide settings by opening the app itself. You can choose from four default themes, which is good if you end up preferring one of them.
There’s also support for keyboard shortcuts if you’re using a Mac, allowing you to toggle the dark theme on or off for the website you’re currently viewing, or even switch between themes.
Sure, it’s a simple app, but it does what it promises. It’s easily worth a few dollars if you’re an avid dark mode user who can’t stand flashy websites.