Night Reader

Reading comfortably with inverted brightness but preserved hue
What is Night Reader?
'Night Reader' is a highly effective and efficient Chrome extension designed to invert webpage brightness while preserving hues. It offers a reprieve to the eyes, particularly useful when reading extensively online. Domain-specific disabling or blacklist feature is available. The extension employs CSS filters which allow system-specific optimizations like hardware acceleration.

Extension stats

Users: 3,000+
Rating: 4.67 (42)
Version: 1.7.41 (Last updated: 2017-11-17)
Creation date: 2017-11-17
Risk impact: Moderate risk impact
Risk likelihood: Very low risk likelihood
Manifest version: 2
Permissions:
  • activeTab
  • storage
  • http://*/*
  • https://*/*
  • ftp://*/*
  • file://*
Size: 208.90K

Other platforms

Night Reader (v1.7.42resigned1)
4.07 (27) 78
Not available on Edge
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Extension summary

This extension eases your eyes by inverting the brightness of every webpage you browse. The majority of websites mainly use very light colors, but some already have a refreshing dark theme. For these the user can disable the domain, essentially setting it on a blacklist of the application. Its goal is, in contrast to the approach of creating new webpage–specific templates, to be as general as possible. This is best achieved by applying the CSS filter invert to the document root, because it inverts the whole area in one swoop after it got rendered normally instead of going through every element. This is even more efficient because CSS filters rely on the browser implementation, meaning all the good stuff like hardware acceleration or other system specific optimizations. Images should still show normally, but single elements cannot be excluded from the filter. This is no problem, since they can just get inverted on their own before the whole document gets inverted, reverting the images to their original color. To preserve the visual appearance of websites which may be iconic like the blue theme of Facebook, another filter is applied that rotates the hue back by 180 degrees. However, due to certain limitations of the RGB color model, very saturated colors get clipped in their value component that would have to exceed the maximum, resulting in occasional weird–looking images after they got reverted. Where an exact representation is needed, the hue–rotation can be disabled.

[TODO]

more ideas to be implemented in future releases are: — serve options page to input custom CSS rules to optimize other websites — friendly ui for options page (e.g. click [+] to add a rule, specify the case e.g. as regex, input CSS to be applied into text field) — keyboard shortcuts for enabling/disabling on domain and more — (maybe) make only–invert option domain specific — (maybe) optionally stop inverting input text fields — (do YOU have an idea? contact me!)

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User reviews

These summaries are automatically generated weekly using AI based on recent user reviews. Chrome Web Store does not verify user reviews, so some user reviews may be inaccurate, spammy, or outdated.
Pros
  • Works well with Duolingo and many other websites
  • Provides a comfortable reading experience with effective dark mode
  • Ability to customize dark mode settings for individual sites
  • Functional on Google pages, including Google Images
  • One of the few dark mode extensions that works perfectly
Cons
  • Inconsistent performance; sometimes it doesn't work
  • Requires access to browsing data with no clear privacy statement
  • Does not work with PDF views
  • Lack of an easily accessible toggle button for quick manipulation
Most mentioned
  • Effective dark mode for various websites
  • Customization options for different sites
  • Privacy concerns regarding browsing data
Recent reviews
estuve buscando una extensión que sirviera con Duolingo, y de las que probé esta es la única que si sirve bien.
by pipe 4545, 2023-02-21

I almost gave up looking for a dark page addon until I found this one. This one gave thought to actually being able to see the text well, while all the other ones had the text too grayish dim, and any blue text too dark to even read against that black background. What was they thinking. This one is the best. Long live it.
by tellfile, 2022-12-09

This extension is so henky. Sometimes it works (rarely) but most of time it does not. I have tried reloading. Using the rotate option etc but nothing works any longer. It did a few times. Removing it today.
by Maria Mason, 2022-10-25
View all user reviews

Extension safety

Risk impact

Night Reader requires a few sensitive permissions. Exercise caution before installing.

Risk likelihood

Night Reader has earned a good reputation and can be trusted.

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Promo images

Night Reader small promo image
Small promo image

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