Hello! Chiming in here with what some might find bad news — which is that this feature will likely not be implemented. I will explain why, but first, it’s important to define what we mean when we say “Dark mode”.
Sometimes people conflate a browser having a “dark theme” and a browser having a “night mode”. A “theme” is simply the way in which the browser windows colors and internal pages/menus are displayed. Some sites are designed in such a way to detect whether or not a browser has a dark theme and, if so, will display the site using their “dark theme”.
“Night mode” — seen at this time only on mobile versions of the browser — is a browser setting that will force sites to display different colors to appear dark, even if that site does not have a built-in “dark theme” (or do not have the code implemented to detect what theme the user has enabled in their browser).
For example, when I have the “dark theme” enabled in Brave on Android and visit, Wikipedia, it displays like this:
This behavior is the same in Chrome, Firefox and most other browsers. By default, the site displays regularly, ignoring the theme setting. In order for Wikipedia to detect your theme, you have go into Wikipedia’s site settings and change the theme there to Automatic, because these settings are controlled by the site itself, not Brave.
It is the same for the desktop version of the browser. If you visit a site that displays dark while you have your “dark theme” enabled and want to turn that specific site’s “dark theme” off, you’ll need to do so on the site itself as we do not explicitly control this functionality.
Conversely, if I enable “Night mode” in Brave on my Android device and visit Wikipedia, it now displays like this:
It will display this way regardless of what “theme” is set in the browser or on the website. That is because the “Night mode” feature modifies the colors/code that the site uses, typically replacing bright colors like white with darker colors that are easier on the eyes. This is controlled by the browser, not the site.
Conclusion/TL;DR
For Brave on desktop is unlikely that a “per-site dark theme” option will be implemented, due to the fact that browser “theme” is a global setting applied to the browser, not to the site itself. The site you’re visiting controls how it is rendered. If you want to disable a site’s “dark theme”, simply use the theme setting on the site itself.
Hope this helps.
Notes:
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There is a flag you can enable — #enable-force-dark — on desktop that essentially is a form of “night mode” on desktop. That said, as stated above, the point of this theme is to ensure that all sites appear dark, regardless of browser/site settings.
Again, if you only want some sites to appear in normal/light mode and others dark, you will be much better served simply disabling/enabling the relevant theme on the site itself. It is also worth noting that this particular feature is experimental (as most flags are) and may cause unforeseen issues when enabled.
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On Desktop, you can also use the “Speedreader” feature in Brave, which itself offers options for to display different colors for sites that are compatible with the feature:
- Lastly, while I don’t typically like to endorse 3rd party extensions (as they come with their own potential security risks), there are extensions that you can install that will do this for you. The Dark Reader extension is one of the more popular ones used:
