Ask HN: Dark mode for HN please? (2026)

A user requests a native dark mode for Hacker News, arguing the site’s persistent bright default is painful at night and existing community workarounds are messy or unsafe. They note an earlier 2020 discussion cataloged around 100 hacky fixes, but most solutions - browser extensions, userstyles, or a problematic iOS app that flashes pages and demands blind trust - are “janky” and introduce nausea, complexity, or security concerns. The broader complaint is that the site’s aesthetic stubbornness forces people to change their OS or trust third-party tools instead of offering a straightforward, site-level option for logged-in users.

Two concrete proposals are offered: (A) provide a custom CSS textarea for logged-in users to enable full creativity and experimentation, accepting trade-offs around security, bloat, and mistakes; (B) add a simple dropdown with a few curated themes or an easy invert using CSS’s filter: invert(), possibly selected via a community contest to leverage the site’s CSS talent and modern ML tools. The writer wants a native solution so readers don’t need to alter their OS or trust external apps, while conceding that an explicit policy advising against reading at night would also be an acceptable, if blunt, alternative.