⚙️ Dark Mode Musings
I've been all in on dark mode for a while now. Initially, I just enjoyed switching it on as a change of pace in macOS, but wasn't completely sold. I'd always preferred dark terminal themes, but I've got three decades worth of nostalgia for the conventional light macOS GUI. That said, at a certain in the last couple years I discovered that my aging eyes were really starting to struggle with bright white screens and web pages. And it turned out that switching to dark mode full-time helped a lot in that regard.
One thing I've really liked about Bear Blog is that many of the themes that people use have built-in dark mode support. But today I was struck by how many web pages I visit still don't have dark mode support. CSS makes it relatively simple to set up and for me, it truly is an accessibility and quality-of-life feature. It's a real shame that more web sites don't support it.
Case in point at work today I was struck by the fact that our support ticketing system still doesn't support dark mode after its latest update. Their recommendation is to use a browser extension. That's fine in Chrome and Firefox where there are a few different free or open-source ones, but Safari is tricky because Apple moved extensions into the app store where the economics tend to force developers to charge for their products.
After doing some research Noir looks like the front-runner for best web dark mode in macOS and iOS. The two key features are multiple custom themes and per-site settings. iCloud syncing is also a real potential benefit. Both platform versions are $3.991. I haven't purchased it yet, but will finally take it for a spin tomorrow in macOS hopefully.
I'm not super excited to pay $8 to get Noir on both macOS and iOS mainly because I try to maintain a pretty disciplined app store budget. It really seems like there should be some kind of dual-platform bundle, but in the grand scheme of things if it works as well as reported it's a great value.↩